Explaining the Rapid Rise of the Xenophobic Right in Contemporary Europe

The last three decades have witnessed a remarkable rise in xenophobic, deeply conservative, and even extreme right-wing parties across much of Europe.[1] Whereas thirty years ago most xenophobic parties failed to even pass the 5% minimum voter threshold that is typically required to enter government, it can be argued that they now constitute as much as ~28% of the parliament in countries like Austria, and arguably have reached the ~70% level in Hungary.[2] By 1999, the Austrians—who traditionally tout themselves as the “first victims” of the Third Reich—had elected the prominent nationalist and accused Holocaust denier[3] Jörg Haider as the governor of Carinthia and given his Freedom Party more than 26% of the vote in the national elections. Haider proceeded to personally help dismantle multilingual street signs that were erected for the local Slovene minority.[4] The Golden Dawn party, which now has more than ~7% of the national vote in Greece, often marches in the streets of Athens with Rune-emblazoned flags and jackboots that easily remind the older generations of the German occupation of 1941-45. Most recently, the Golden Dawn has distributed free meals to the racially “authentic” Greek public.[5] At the same time, prominent members of Hungary’s powerful Jobbik party have even called for the government to prepare lists of Jews who might “[pose a] threat to Hungarian national security.”[6]

Hoping to understand these surprising changes in the European political climate, this post will briefly analyze the characteristics of the xenophobic right as of 2013, underscore the diversity of xenophobic parties, and try to explain some of the patterns encountered when the far-right takes hold, as well as their exceptions. The rough percentages listed next to the parties refer to their approximate share of national parliaments according to the most recent elections, and are corroborated with each country’s respective government websites. It will become apparent that it is very difficult to locate common patterns that might explain when and why the far-right takes hold in Europe.

The shift across Europe towards the right is perhaps as surprising as it is alarming, considering that the specters of World War II and totalitarianism are still ripe in the historical memory of virtually all European societies. Even more surprising, the xenophobic right has enjoyed some of its greatest successes in countries that are usually associated with liberalism and multiculturalism, including Switzerland, Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Even in supposedly tolerant Switzerland, the powerful Swiss People’s Party (~26%) has restricted the construction of mosques and minarets and has even campaigned with an ad that depicted three white sheep kicking a black one out of the country.[7] Far-right, racist parties like Vlaams Blok in Belgium were gaining in popularity until they were banned for extremism in 2004. In the 2003 elections, the Vlaams Blok won almost 12% of the seats in the Chamber of Representatives. Observers in the West have especially struggled to comprehend how quickly the extreme right has emerged in Greece, the supposed birthplace of democracy. The growing popularity of the right across the continent is a source of great concern for human rights groups in Brussels, which routinely encourage national courts to ban xenophobic parties on the grounds that they breach international protections against racism.

My map charting the spread of elected xenophobic parties in Europe as of 2013. When viewed on a map, the growth of the far-right is striking. Green refers to countries were a xenophobic party is in government, which gray means none is in power. Copyright James Mayfield/GeoCurrents.

However, it is critical to understand that “the right” cannot be homogenized or reduced to the typical imagery of fascism, neo-Nazism, racism, or dictatorship that might emerge in our minds when we think of the right in European history. Xenophobic parties have garnered increasing support from voters of diverse political ideologies, primarily because of growing disaffection with the status quo. As the vulnerabilities of the European Union become more apparent, increasing numbers are calling for reform of pan-European economics, integration, open border immigration, and multiculturalism—principles that have shaped the development of Europe since World War II. With skyrocketing unemployment across most of the continent, massive immigration from Africa, Asia, and the Balkans into Western Europe, and what many feel to be a broken economic and political structure of the European Union, voters of various backgrounds seem to be choosing radically different solutions to the ongoing crises in Europe.

With this in mind, it is important to recognize that political movements of the xenophobic right are just as varied as social democratic and far-left parties. They include traditionalists, pro-Europeanists, Euroskeptics, democrats, nationalists, racialists, neo-Nazis, and even Greens. The vast majority of xenophobic parties calling for restricted immigration are obdurately democratic. Most advocate a traditional, conservative, or even moderate approach to resolving Europe’s problems within the democratic process. These relatively moderate nationalists include the True Finns of Finland (~19%), the Sweden Democrats (~6%), the Danish People’s Party (~12%), and the People’s Party of Portugal (~11%). Even the ruling Fidesz Party of Hungary (~53%) advocates a conservative platform rather than a militant or autocratic agenda, despite being castigated by Western media as far-right or even dictatorial after it amended the constitution to strengthen executive powers.[8] In some countries, such as Serbia and France, far-right parties have little parliamentary strength but still boast very popular public figures. The Front National of France has only two seats in the National Assembly out of 577, but Marine Le Pen came in third in the 2012 presidential election with almost 18% of the vote. The extremist, racialist Serbian Radical Party is not even in the national government, but its former leader Tomislav Nikolić was elected president of Serbia in 2012. In short, we should be wary about placing all xenophobic movements in the same category. They vary as much in regard to their popular support as they do in regard to their ideology, and not all of them embrace anti-democratic, fascist, or authoritarian agendas.

Although all of these parties have their share of supporters who take a more violent approach to tackling immigration, most parties on “the far-right” are better described as conservative and xenophobic. The majority advocate a multi-party democratic system and do not call for any future constitutional changes that might repudiate democratic checks and balances. Most call for a non-violent solution to Europe’s economic and immigration issues. Even such nationalist parties as the New Flemish Alliance (~17%) and the Vlaams Belang (~8%) of Belgium are staunchly ethnic nationalist, but their ideology springs just as much from a desire to strengthen the rights of the Flemish population as it does from their plans to target immigrants. The same tendency applies to the rather moderate National Alliance of Latvia (~14%) and the Order & Justice Party of Lithuania (~13%), which are most concerned with offsetting the historically disproportionate influence of Russian minorities who settled in these states during the Soviet era.

The only major elected parties that take an aggressive, racialist, militant stance are the Jobbik Party of Hungary (~17%), Svoboda of Ukraine (~11%), the Golden Dawn of Greece (~7%), and “Attack!” of Bulgaria (~10%). For example, whereas most Greek parties are at least to some extent cultural nationalists (including the PASOK socialists) who allow immigrants like Albanians to assimilate into Greek culture, only the Golden Dawn often sees “Greek” as an exclusive racial category. The Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian far-right often makes similar exclusions. By contrast, “moderate nationalists” like the Sweden Democrats are more interested in curbing unrestricted immigration than they are in racial issues. Quite different are more militant parties like Jobbik, which is often accused of having links to the Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda), a quasi-paramilitary organization that has been compared to the brownshirts of the German SA.[9] While Bulgarian nationalists, the Golden Dawn, and Svoboda do not have equivalent organizations, their supporters have been widely linked to vandalism and assaults against immigrants, mosques, and synagogues in Athens, Sofia, and Kiev.[10] It is also widely assumed that the Athens police either cooperates with Golden Dawn or at least looks the other way during the frequent assaults on Albanian, Turkish, and Muslim immigrants in the capital.[11]

Although the economic weaknesses that have swept the EU since 2008 have become increasingly obvious, the chief reason behind the rise of the xenophobic right is not the economic alternatives it offers, but rather its hostility towards unrestricted immigration from Africa, Asia, and the Balkans. But here too, each country and party is very distinct. Xenophobic parties in Europe range from simply wanting tighter border controls, to calling for a “whites-only” immigration policy, to demanding the wholesale deportation of minorities. Although virtually all xenophobic parties are at least “soft Euroskeptic,” some merely call for greater national autonomy within the EU, whereas other are petitioning to quit the EU altogether, primarily in order to resolve the supposed immigration crisis.

Although xenophobic parties challenge immigration policies as a whole, most of their hostility is focused on Muslim immigrants, especially Moroccans, Indonesians, Arabs, Somalis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis, as well as African blacks. Importantly, xenophobia is often equally harsh against other European or “white” immigrants, particularly Albanians, Bosniaks, Greeks, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Poles, Balts, Romanians, and Russians. In Italy, the center-right Lega Nord is more xenophobic towards Southern Italians than towards Muslims. The Golden Dawn of Greece is viciously hostile towards Albanians. In Switzerland, xenophobia is mostly directed against immigrants from the former Yugoslavia. Whereas most major xenophobic parties are not overtly Anti-Semitic, Hungary’s Jobbik is widely seen as not just Anti-Zionist but anti-Jewish, and deeply anti-Ziganist (anti-Gypsy) as well. Austrian right-wing parties are usually focused against Slavs and Turks, while in the Netherlands the noted provocateur Geert Wilders and his Dutch Party of Freedom (~10%) are particularly hostile towards Muslims, especially Indonesians and Somalis. The militant Svoboda party of Ukraine (~11%) directs most of its xenophobia against ethnic Russians, Jews, Tatars, and Roma, while the aptly named “Attack!” party of Bulgaria (~10%) is vociferously anti-Ziganist, anti-Romanian, and anti-Turkish. The popular Bulgarian nationalist Volen Siderov has gone so far as to claim that Bulgaria still has yet to be liberated from “Turkish [i.e. Ottoman] rule” as long as Turks and other Muslims (presumably the Slavic-speaking Pomaks) “occupy” the country. The various “targets” of xenophobic parties demonstrates that the far-right is often successful in countries with large immigrant populations and where hostility towards newcommers is strongest. So too, the diversity of these targets remind us that we cannot generalize far-right movements as if they share the same enemies, agendas, solutions, or even political principles.

My map showing the proportion of Muslim populations in Europe today (including indigenous and immigrant populations). Also included are the ethnic groups that often become the focus of the hostility of xenophobic parties. Stats from government websites and the CIA World Factbook.

It is thus difficult to locate patterns that might explain why and where the far-right has achieved electoral success. Many examples lead to contradictory and surprising results. It is suggestive that this trend is occurring during a time of great economic hardship—just as the far-right gained sway in Europe during the post-WWI slump in the early 1920s. and especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s Considering the historical link between economic instability and the rise of the far-right, it is thus surprising that such countries as Spain and Cyprus have very weak far-right movements despite having suffered skyrocketing unemployment and crippling public debt. Instead, leftist parties such as the Eurocommunist Progressive Party of Cyprus and the left-leaning ethnic separatists of Catalonia have enjoyed remarkable success in the last several years.

As another possible explanation, one might expect immigrant “transit” countries that have recently experienced a surge of immigration, such as Malta, Italy, and Cyprus, to turn towards the right. But this is not generally the case. Indeed, Malta’s powerful Nationalist Party is deeply conservative and pro-Maltese, while Italy has several small neo-fascist parties, such as that of Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra. However, extreme xenophobic parties like Imperu Ewropew of Malta and Forza Nuova of Italy have had very little success. Neither is even in the national government.

Other cases also make it difficult to find consistent patterns behind the rise of the xenophobic right. We might expect ethnically diverse countries with large immigrant populations like the United Kingdom to have strong right-wing movements. However, the British National Party has consistently failed to meet the 5% threshold. (The burgeoning U.K. Independence Party is certainly conservative and EU-skeptical, but it is not truly xenophobic.) However, diverse and immigrant-rich France has seen the rise of powerful xenophobic figures like Marine Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen before her. If ethnic diversity itself does not automatically trigger the rise of the far-right, one might conclude that ethnic homogeneity provides a more fertile ground for xenophobia. This is certainly the case in regard to Hungary, which has by far the largest right-wing movement in Europe in terms of its electoral results. So too, relatively homogenous Finland offers substantial support to xenophobic nationalist parties like the True Finns (~19%). However, other relatively homogenous states, like Poland and Norway, have weak xenophobic parties.

We might also be inclined to look for basic cultural characteristics that might explain the rise of the far-right. It is perhaps intriguing that Hungary seems to be the first country to drift towards the far-right, having been the first to pass anti-Jewish legislation in the 1930s when Miklos Horthy installed a right-wing dictatorship . However, cultural xenophobia alone does not seem to lend electoral success to far-right parties. A prime example here is Romania. Although Romanian culture is often described as deeply xenophobic and often viciously racist (particularly against Roma and Jews, and even Hungarian to some extent), the Romanian parliament is almost completely social democratic and socialist. The same might be said about Poland, Serbia, and Croatia. Even countries with genocidal pasts such as Slovakia, Germany, Croatia, and Serbia, lack strong right-wing parties. Another key example is Russia. Although Russia has what many sources consider to be the most virulent subculture of skinheads and neo-Nazis fomenting violence against migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia—marked by such horrors as the filmed beheading of a Tajik boy—extreme right parties like Great Russia and the Russian All-People’s Union have very little electoral success.[12] In short, there does not seem to be anything inherent in European national cultures that puts xenophobic parties in power.

One final explanation adds both perspective and contradiction. We might expect countries facing a difficult, traumatic, or confusing phase of transition to move towards extremist movements. Studies have shown that neo-Nazism, nationalism, and the National Democratic Party are far stronger in the former East Germany than in the rest of the country since the fall of the Berlin Wall. So too, this concept of transition may explain why Bulgarians and Ukrainians tend to support the far-right as they move away from their communist past. However, this explanation falls flat when we look at other former socialist states like Romania, Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic, where the far-right is rather weak. Transition and cultural insecurity alone do not provide an explanation.

Two final examples are perhaps the most surprising when trying to explain the rise of the far-right: Norway and Sweden. Right-wing parties have never had much success in either country. Norway’s powerful Progressive Party (~22%) is only mildly xenophobic and is better described as conservative nationalist. The Sweden Democrats are much more virulently xenophobic, but have only recently broken the 5% minimum threshold necessary to enter government. However, throughout the 1990s and even today, Norway and Sweden saw some of the most brutal waves of anti-immigrant violence in Europe. While theses attitudes are by no means widespread in Scandinavia, this seeming contradiction might reinforce our conclusion that cultural xenophobia does not mean xenophobic parties will get elected. In Norway and Sweden, the extreme “black metal” music-oriented subculture that emerged in 1992 perpetrated numerous brutal attacks on immigrants.[13] Over a hundred churches were burned in Norway and Sweden, often with the intent to purge Scandinavia of Christian influences that the arsonists interpreted as an immigrant “Middle Eastern plague” that had to be replaced by the ancient Nordic racial religion.[14] Norway’s supposed immigration problem was met with uncompromising xenophobia and racism by members of this subculture. As late as 2008, prominent black metal musicians like Gaahl insisted that Norwegians had a duty to “remove every trace [of] what…the Semitic roots have to offer this world.”[15] He captured the opinion of much of the growing subculture by asserting that Norway is no place for immigrant “niggers” and “mulattos.”[16] The popular Norwegian drummer Jan Axel Blomberg repeated similarly that “we don’t like black people here.”[17] The Norwegian case tells us that homogenous cultures facing a very difficult adjustment to immigration and diversity often generate extreme reactions, but that such reactions do not necessarily translate into electoral success.

As this post has demonstrated, the xenophobic right has become more pervasive than most observers may have realized. Perhaps this is disconcerting. At the same time as many Europeans are calling for greater integration and cooperation in order to fix Europe’s problems, increasing numbers of people are moving in the opposite direction by advocating greater nationalism, homogeneity, and xenophobia. However, the common gut reaction to interpret this trend as a rebirth of fascism, Nazism, racialism, or dictatorship is as sensationalist as it is oversimplified. The xenophobic right advocates radically different economic, political, and cultural platforms in response to the supposed immigration crisis. So too, as the above cases demonstrate, we cannot explain when and why the far-right takes hold by pointing to any common cultural, demographic, or economic patterns. When we consider the aforementioned conflicting and contradictory cases in Europe, it remains to be found what exactly causes far-right parties to become popular so quickly. Each xenophobic movement must be observed—with understandable trepidation and concern—on a country-by-country basis.

James Mayfield is a historian, researcher, and translator from StanfordUniversity with two Masters Degrees in History. He specializes in genocide, nationalism, post-colonial identity, and cultural traumas. He currently has two books soon to be released, one on the expulsion of 10,000,000 ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe (Memoria del Olvido) and one on an ethnic Slovene survivor of both German and Italian concentration camps during World War II (Peter Starič, My Life under Totalitarianism). Contact him here: [email protected]

[1] In this article, “xenophobia” refers to any political platform that calls for the strict limitation of immigration, strengthened border controls, the reform or abolition of the Schengen Zone, or even the expulsion of minorities.

[2] This number refers to the combination of the Austrian Freedom Party (roughly 17% of the Nationalrat) and the Alliance for the Future of Austria (~11%). For Hungary, this number refers to Fidesz (~53%) and Jobbik (~17%).

[8] Hungary has even been threatened with suspension or punishment by some European Union MEPs. See Pablo Gorondi, “Hungarian PM Orban rejects criticism of constitutional change, says democracy not threatened,” Fox News, www.foxnews.com/world/2013/03/14/hungarian-pm-orban-rejects-criticism-constitutional-changes-says-democracy-not.

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Commenting Guidelines: GeoCurrents is a forum for the respectful exchange of ideas, and loaded political commentary can detract from that. We ask that you as a reader keep this in mind when sharing your thoughts in the comments below.

Ed Goodson

Why are you not including Spain’s currently-ruling Partido Popular in your list of xenophobic parties?

Eskarpas

The thing is that ideologies of the parties mentioned here are very different from each other that I believe this should not be treated as a single issue. While a few of these parties indeed can be classified as “xenophobic”, many others listed here definitely couldn’t.

One example is Order and Justice of Lithuania definitely could not be classified as either xenophobic or deeply conservative. It is a product of something that does not exist in the West: non-ideological “personal parties” associated with some single famous politician rather than an ideology (more info: http://www.truelithuania.com/politics-in-lithuania-148 ). Like other similar parties it has members from across the political spectrum.

Unfortunately it became popular to look to the supposed rise of the “far right” as a single phenomenon. This is in my opinion alarmist. Furthermore, this alarm is frequently raised by people who themselves incite hatred on certain grounds (e.g. anti-religious, “far left”).

In today’s Western world the name “human rights promoter” is also adopted by very different people some of who actually promote the rights of only a few groups and discriminate others, as evidenced in the increasingly frequent advocation of heavily curbing freedom of speech and other freedoms of political conservatives (including the examples you have mentioned) and some other groups.

One thing that is wrong with the alarmist positions is the claim that this ideological shift is new. In fact, there is nothing new in this. If we would look in the era of World War 2 and apply the word “xenophobic”/”far right” as we do today then every *Allied* government would have to be considered as Nazi. After all, USA was still racially segregated, Charles De Gaulle ordered Paris to be liberated by white troops, homosexual sex was illegal in almost every country and so on.

Today no political party of any significant support would advocate for either racial segregation or ban of homosexual relations.

So it is not like such ideologies became more popular. Vice-versa – true far right ideology was been largely obliterated in most European countries. Some other formerly radical parties adapted by moderating their ideas and this (rather than some rise of xenophobia) was what attracted new voters. Some other former radical parties were disestablished e.g. due to low membership (National Socialist Front of Sweden, etc.).

What happened however is that now some people prefer to use the name “far right” or “xenophobic” for groups that would not be considered such 10 or 30 years ago. The support for such ideologies did not increase. Just that it is only today some people publically claims that this is a problem.

Also what is considered “radical” depends on country. While in Germany for instance any euroscepticism rings the bell of “far right” to some columnists, in United Kingdom euroscepticism is a largely accepted mainstream (majority even) view. In fact, if you move word-by-word some programs of the “far right” parties to other European countries they would be considered mainstream and vice-versa. For instance you claim that Poland has no such parties while in Finland True Finns is popular; however I believe that programs of some Polish parties, if moved to Finland, would be considered “xenophobic” by some alarmists whereas the program of True Finns would likely be considered mainstream in Poland (where there is generally less alarmism on the issue and therefore less attempts to smear political opponents as “far right”). This is yet another reason this could not be treated as a single phenomenon.
Perhaps due to language barriers the party programs are typically not directly compared by columnists, instead opting for bits of information such as quotations or adverts. However this is frequently misleading as these typically represent only a single party or even a single politician who may have diverse views from the rest of the party (as in the Lithuanian “personal parties” example). Taking some facts out-of-context then applying them to a much larger group of people (e.g. all conservative parties of Europe) is not scientifically valid. By the way this is a method used in most incitement of hatred, including xenophobic (e.g. by claiming that most Muslims are terrorist-supporters and then describing a few real Muslim terrorists as “evidence”).

P.S. it is also wrong to consider xenophobia as a right wing phenomenon. Whereas in the Western Europe leftism has been recently associated with multiculturality in the Eastern Europe leftist parties have adopted many xenophobic measures in the past, including forcible adoption of Bulgarian names for its Turkish minority and so on. On the global scale right/left wing economical views are not correlating with non-economical values.

boris denisov

I will add. The author defined xenophobia, but did not define right. From my viewpoint Hitler Nazies were not right but left, however there is a solid Soviet tradition to label Nazies – right, thus anything that seems like Nazi is right. Imho = it is misleading.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Indeed, the Soviet tradition is due to the fact that they wanted to distance themselves from the Nazis by highlighting the differences and completely hiding the similarities. That’s also why they called them “fascist” rather than “Nazies”.

Eskarpas

Thank you, a very correct comment. In fact many of political parties described in this article are leftist in their economic ideals as well: promoting greater redistribution of wealth, being critical of large businesses, etc.

SirBedevere

As Eskarpas argues, this seems quite an overgeneralization. Just to take one instance, we have 70% of Hungarians supporting whatever this “far right” is supposed to be. 50% or so of that would be support for FiDeSz, which is certainly a national conservative party of a sort, though if it is to be included here, why not include the British Conservative party (at least its Euroskeptic wing), the Partido Popular, the Austrian People’s Party, United Russia, and any number of other national conservative parties?

As for why the more extreme of these parties have become popular, the fact that you are speaking in terms of the last three decades would seem to undermine many of your arguments. In some cases (maybe Belgium, Austria, Italy), the coalitions that were formed to exclude fascist and nationalist parties were seen by some people by the 1980s as oppressive themselves. Looking for a real protest against the center-left or even right-center-left coalitions, some voters turned to the far right. I may be wrong, but I seem to remember the far left getting a bit of a bump by the late 1980s as well.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I’ve been wondering about Putin’s United Russia myself and especially its youth movement, Nashi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_%28youth_movement%29). Although they have the word “anti-fascist” in their name, some have compared it to the Soviet Komsomol and even to Hitler Youth (the above mentioned Wiki article has some quotes to this effect). There’s an excellent (and much earlier) Russian film, “Bakenbardy” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099097/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), a political satire which depicts the all-too-easy transformation from a national into a nationalist idea—much recommended!

SirBedevere

Well, being “anti-fascist” is what even most right-wing Russians see as part of their national tradition, while extreme right-wing Hungarians may look to Horthy or even the Arrow Cross. The reason I bring up United Russia, is that the scariest thing about Mr. Orban’s Fidesz is the centralization of power in the executive, which, it strikes me, while scary, is nothing like what Mr. Putin has done in Russia.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Not the same? Really?

Eskarpas

Reactions to Hungarian constitution are quite alarmist I believe as the constitution does not includes anything what already does not exist in no other EU country. The situation in Russia is different in many senses. Killings of disloyal journalists, nationalization of disloyal media and companies of businessmen who support the opposition, arrests of political opponents, popular opinions on the Caucassians (and pogroms against them) are just some examples – but probably this will be analyzed further in Geocurrents articles.

As for self-described “anti-fascism” of Russian national chauvinists – the thing is that while liberalism, socialdemocracy, conservatism or even some forms of nationalism may be international (i.e. sharing similar ideas across nations), national chauvinism never could. Every national chauvinist builds his opinions on *his own* national history and political realities. So many Russian national chauvinists regard both Russian Empire and Soviet Union to have been times of glory, and Germany as traditional enemy with World War 2 as a key fight. “Nazism”/”Fascism” is relegated in meaning to “Pro-Hitler stance” or even changed in meaning to “Anti-Russian/Anti-Soviet stance” (as one Russian national chauvinist I discussed with put it: “There can be as much Nazism in Russia as Anti-Semitism in Israel”).

SirBedevere

The little bits of “Bakenbardy” I found online look hilarious. I do hope there is a version available in Hungary, because not only the ridiculous things they are saying, but even their clothes look hilariously Jobbik to me. By the way, what does бакенбард mean? I had thought there was a version of Brokgauz i Efron online, but I can’t seem to find it.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Bakenbardy = sideburns (as in facial hair). When you want the movie, you will see why. Not sure if there’s a full version online, but would a Russian-only version do? If so, let me know.

James Mayfield

That’s the point of the article. We can’t overgeneralize or lump all these parties together. But human rights groups are concerned about the rise of “the right,” which I tried to interpret. The article even says Fidesz is not far-right.

SirBedevere

I’m sorry, when I first wrote that, I had “in the article and in Eskarpas’s comment.” Unfortunately, I had to rewrite it for some reason. In fact, I quite like the distinctions you point out in the article. The puzzling part to me is the map. Is there a method to the color? Why, for instance, are Hungary and Sweden green, but Russia and Norway grey? Does it relate to something other than these parties you are picking out?

James Mayfield

Thanks. Good point on the map. Sorry about that. The green refers to countries were the xenophobic right has entered government. The gray means none is in government. Of course, what constitutes a xenophobic party is subjective, which is what we’re exploring in these comments.

Guest

Why russia is not green then?

James Mayfield

Because there is no major xenophobic party in power. Nashe is conservative-nationalist in my view, but not xenophobic in the same sense as Jobbik or even the True Finns.

RonHess

You call protecting one’s own people from de facto invasion, the usurpation of their identities and possession of their small homelands XENOPHOBIA? It’s quite obvious you are a critical theorist bent upon assisting this destruction by demonizing normal self-preservation. Why don’t you talk about “XENOPHOBIA” in Israel? Why do you say nothing about Christian priests being SPAT upon by Jews there? Because, “James Mayfield,” you have been conditioned to lick the boots and parrot the party line of the Rothschildist destroyers of your own people. You either know not what you do or you are a traitor, which is it?

“Xenophobic,” in your terminology Mr. Mayfield, means resisting this torrent of hatred for native European populations. It means resisting Jewish banksters in their aims to implode one’s own nation’s economy so they can do a hostile takeover to take control of said country’s assets. It means protecting one’s ancient birthright. It is what I would call not xenophobic, but HEROIC.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Unless you have any evidence to support your hateful comments, we will have to erase your comment, as per the GeoCurrents comments policy.

So, is Ms. Spectre’s crime that she is not welcoming to violence against Swedish Jews, or that she sees it likely that there will be immigration into Sweden in the coming years? As to the Eritreans, refugee status is not a permanent state, but generally ends when the situation that gave rise to it ends. In this case, one might argue that the new situation in Eritrea is no safer, but that is a matter for Israeli courts. In any case, aren’t you arguing that everyone should go back to his “ancient” homeland anyway? I find a racist rant quite entertaining every now and again, but try to keep it relevant and consistent. You haven’t even reached the level of rational discourse found in Mr. Hitler’s “struggle” book here, and that’s a pretty low bar.

RonHess

Her crime is quite obvious. She is promoting “multiculturalism.” Do you think you have totally validated multiculturalism by crushing all opposition to this policy of purposeful population displacement simply by enacting “hate speech” laws to crush all opposition? The fact that “hate speech” laws HAVE been enacted is de facto admission that the policy is indefensible. Utterly foreign cultures are introduced into formerly peaceful European countries, and suddenly there is an epidemic of gang rape, areas of Sweden become “no go” areas to SWEDES, and even to Swedish authorities. That is nothing but conquest by an invading army, and those like yourself who espouse or allow cultural marxist policies which prevent Swedes from fighting back against this violent invasion are in violation of the spirit of all international law. You say it was “Swedish” politicians who adopted this policy? Really? Then why are Swedish politicians not reversing an obviously failed policy? Why have politicians in every European country marched in lock step to similar policies? Could it be that this policy is determined at a higher level than those who pose as the representative governments of those countries? I think that is a definite YES. We all know how it works. The politicians are quite evidently bought and paid for by the globalist mob at the top who dares to call itself the “elite.” The evidence is circumstantial in most cases, but it is incontrovertible.

Realist T

Barbara Lerner Spectre’s crime is to dedicate her life to making Sweden multicultural and no longer Swedish. There are countless others like her who dedicate their time to making white societies no longer white. Why will Europe not survive if it doesn’t become multicultural, Ms. Spectre? Why? It’s a straw-man argument to further her agenda of a non-Swedish Sweden.

Imagine the outrage if I immigrated to Israel and devoted my time to integrating African and Muslim immigrants into Israel. But that’s right, Israel protects its Jewish character and probably wouldn’t allow me to immigrate in the first place.

SirBedevere

What Swedish means has changed many times over the last millennium and a half and it will continue to change. Would you take it back three decades, when it meant socialism and legal pornography, a century and a half, when it meant stolid Lutheranism, brown bread, and starvation, or a millennium, when it meant preying on Baltic trade? Or does your definition have a bit more to do with the amount of melanin in a Swede’s skin? As for integrating African immigrants into Israel, the Israeli government spends a fair amount of money trying to do just that and their are many NGOs that do too. As for Muslims, I don’t know how many Muslim immigrants Israel gets, so I could only conjecture. Israel does expend a certain amount of effort trying to integrate Arab Israelis, Druze, and Bedouins, though.

Realist T

I prefer to not play critical theory word games. Skin color is the crudest measure of race and only the most obvious. Liberals have a false belief that all the peoples of the world are somehow biologically the same except for melanins. If you take a few million Africans and Muslims and fully integrate them into Swedish society to the point that they all breed with Swedish women, within a generation Swedes and Sweden will no longer resemble Swedes and Sweden in any manner. They won’t look like Swedes, yes, and they also won’t act, think or even smell like Swedes when they sweat.

The race makes the culture and the culture is supposed to maintain the race that made it, or else the race and then the culture disappears. To pretend that human races are not analogous to dog breeds is to put your head in the sand. Remember that race science is suppressed for sociopolitical reasons: see “politically incorrect.” But even so there is a myriad of evidence of racial differences available on the Internet if common sense won’t work for you including but not limited to medical biochemical differences, general intelligence differences, psychological studies, crime statistics, and physical morphology. Remember that humans share 98.5% of their DNA with chimpanzees and 70% with potatoes. To pretend that all racial/ethnic differences are accountable to upbringing and a top-down imposed culture is childish and not facing reality. You might then question what we should do with this knowledge. The answer is simple: preserve the ethnic Swedish character of Sweden. This same concept can be applied to other countries.

SirBedevere

So, in your biology, does this Swedish gene track the Swedish language or does it track being a subject of the Swedish king, or what? Three centuries ago, when Finland was part of the Swedish crown, did the inhabitants of Finland have this gene? Did it exist during the period of the Kalmar Union, or was there one genotype for all of Queen Margaret’s subjects? When the king’s male ancestors moved from France, did they eventually gain this gene? I doubt you will find a molecular biologist that kind identify it. On the other hand, your discussion of dog breeds sounds more like physical difference. Now, I am no physical anthropologist, but a physical anthropologist of my acquaintance once pointed out to me that the only groups that could be considered “breeds” of human were Khoisan (Bushmen and Hottentots) and Australian Aborigines, who do show some tiny skull variations. Of course, he said that even those distinctions were not anything like the various breeds of dogs, but possibly like the difference between Siamese and Burmese cats. If you are going to base your taxonomy on genetic or phenotypic differences, you had best be sure that those differences exist and that they track whatever cultural feature you are connecting them with.

Realist T

“You contradict yourself: since there is so little genetic difference among humans of all races, nationalities, whatever, it must the case that a lot of the differences are cultural.” — Eh, no. You have poor reading comprehension. Small genetic differences make huge differences, as is the case with the 1.5% between humans and chimpanzees. It is the expression of genes that matters most.

There likely wouldn’t be a single gene exemplary of Swedishness, but there could be. There would be a multitude of genes in high concentrations among the Swedish population that defines biologic Swedishness which are shared by Finns to a slightly lesser degree with the differences becoming more and more apparent moving farther and farther geographically away from Sweden. Swedes would obviously be more biologically similar to Finns than Spaniards or north Africans. Race is a spectrum. From geneticists’ point of view it is easy to tell the region someone came from with only a DNA sample, and the technology only has potential to improve.

Dog breeds have many more differences between them than only physical differences. Some breeds bark more than others, some are more aggressive, some are smarter, some live longer, the list goes on. If the only thing you need to satisfy your want for evidence of different breeds of humans is skull variation, then I have good news for you: From only the bones, most easily the skull, anthropologists and forensic analysts can easily tell the meta-race of the deceased whether they want to admit it or not. The Europid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid meta-races are so obvious in their skull variations that mere amateurs can point out their origins. Take a look, I bet you know which is the European skull:

“Oh, and most anthropologists do not eschew race science because someone has called it politically incorrect, but rather because it does not stand up to scrutiny. It belongs in the same category as homeopathy and phlogiston theory–of a great deal of interest to the historian, but of very little interest to the biologist.” — Oh, that’s nonsense. I have already given you basic examples of racial differences of potential interest to scientists of varying sorts in my previous post including but not limited to medical biochemical differences, general intelligence differences, psychological studies, crime statistics, and physical morphology. But to explore those differences would send the Western media into a modern day witch hunt. And there’s no denying anthropologists and other academics would lose their funding and possibly their jobs/careers if they merely explored politically incorrect ideas. Then the race deniers say “Look! Even most scientists don’t want to touch the race subject.” Science restricted by politics is not science.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

That small genetic differences may have significant repercussions does not mean that there are no cultural differences. Some people prefer to sleep lying down (unless stuck on an airplane or in a boring lecture), others sitting up. The difference is cultural, not genetic. The ancestors of modern Europeans (who sleep lying down) were sleeping sitting up.

The problem with your idea that there is genetic “Swedishness” is that genetic differences, as you say, are a spectrum whereas cultural/ethnic/national/racial categories are discrete. As James Wilson has already pointed out here, such “genetic Swedishness” does not correlate with language, religion or citizenship. It arises as a result of simple facts such as people tend to marry within a certain distance (though less so now) and within culturally defined groups. So such groups can overtime accumulate a certain gene matrix, but such gene matrix (a) is statistical rather than absolute, and (b) has nothing to do with the nature of the cultural group. If half of Sweden’s population were to be from Somali, then what is “genetically Swedish” in the next generation will be very different from the current generation. Preserving a group’s racial/ethnic purity is merely maintaining the status quo.

Realist T

Culture is important. I don’t see the problem. But to deny the importance of genetic heritage regarding ethnicity is just as myopic. The truth is most mainstream “culture” today is just corporate garbage like MTV, not organic culture made by individual peoples.

(a) Liberals like to operate around exceptions to rules. I like to operate around rules even if there may be exceptions. (b) Your definition of ethnicity is extremist and too fluid. Every generation that has ever lived would consider those to be Somalis living in Sweden, not Swedes. A half-pit bull half-dalmatian is not fully dalmatian just because it lives among a bunch of dalmatians. Sorry.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

So are the English not really English (for your comfort, I am excluding those of South Asian background and other recent immigrants)? Are they half English and half Danish? Or quarter Celt, quarter Dane, quarter English (Saxon), and quarter Norman? Or is there no such thing as “English” (ethnically, according to your non-fluid and non-extremist definition)?

Realist T

To pretend that certain ethnicities do not exist is pretext to genocide them, either through outright killing or gradual assimilation and interbreeding. That is the goal: pretend that Europeans do not exist and then breed them out without outcry, Europe to become Eurabia. No other races will abandon ethnic identity for raceless universalism like liberal whites. They will just laugh at us for handing our countries over to them. France will be the first to become a Muslim republic, and women such as yourself who approve of the invasion will have their rights taken from them under Sharia Law. Irony.

The fact that English have Celtic and continental Germanic tribal ancestors makes no difference. English ethnogenesis took place nearly a thousand years ago and they have been a stable population ever since except for some minor viking raider input hundreds of years ago. To try to claim someone would be just as English who came from south Asia a generation or two ago is ridiculous. That ethnicity/race is not the ethnicity which created the nearly thousand-year-old civilization known as England. Sorry, you were unable to punch a hole in my argument.

I looked up your background and I find it disturbing that you are essentially the same as Barbara Lerner Spectre in both ethnicity and ideology. I also find it fascinating that you teach at Stanford and are taking the time to argue with little old me. Why is it that so many of you espouse multiculturalism for whites and Europeans but support ethnocentrism for Israel? Is it because you know multiculturalism is a weapon of division? Or do you not see the hypocrisy in promoting multiculturalism for others but ethnic cohesion for yourselves?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Please do not ascribe any ideologies to me, as you don’t really know me or what I think. I don’t “espouse multiculturalism for whites and Europeans but support ethnocentrism for Israel”.

My argument about the English is that this ethnic identity was melded from different strands. Why can’t the same happen to new enthicities, say “British”? A thousand years later it would seem as natural as the “English” seems today.

Finally, as Ygor Coelho Soares pointed out in a comment below, nobody is “breeding Europeans out”, as you say, but they do it to themselves. Crucially, however, I don’t think that the influx (“invasion”, as you call it) of people from various other ethnic backgrounds necessarily translates into Sharia law. If these immigrants come because they like living in France (Germany, Britain, etc.) better than in their homeland, why shouldn’t/can’t they obey by the laws/traditions of the new country? Immigrants can keep their traditions in private, but they can’t impose their laws on the society as a whole, at least not if the society is strong and cohesive enough.

Realist T

Denying the uniqueness of race and ethnicity of native Europeans and their exclusive right to the land naturally leads to multiculturalism because if race and ethnicity don’t matter, why not import a bunch of third-world immigrants to boost the economy? Why not have open borders for asylum seekers? Why not be a global village?

The reason that ethnicities should not meld is because it destroys both of the old ethnicities to create a new ethnicity. In the case of the English, since it is the English homeland, it would be the English ethnicity to be destroyed to become neo-English. The Celts who lived on the island a thousand years ago had legitimate claims against the invading Germanic tribes just as the native English who have been there for centuries have legitimate grievances against the invading south Asians. Too bad for the Celts that they lost. In a thousand years, no one would probably care that the present English melded and were destroyed. But it would be a shame to lose the current ethnicity that built the civilization. The English should at least make an effort like the Celts and fight for the survival of their ethnicity.

Europeans are breeding themselves out, yes, by not having enough babies and allowing invaders which have large families to settle in their lands. But there is also a certain other group that has an especially high percentage of activism among its members to help them along their way. You never answered my question about them promoting multiculturalism in white and European countries but supporting ethnocentrism in Israel even if you don’t. Do you disagree with Barbara Lerner Spectre?

The implementation of Sharia Law will easily become a reality once the Muslims outnumber native Europeans in their respective countries. History has taught us such in every instance when Muslims become the majority. They don’t assimilate, not that I’d want them to, and form their Muslim ghettos which even today have active patrols that use intimidation to force elements of Sharia onto native Europeans.; They are Muslims first and these no-go zones will continue to grow in number and size as the Muslim populations steadily increase.

The North American continent faces threat of Hispanisation. The concept is quite easy to understand in evolutionary biology and historical terms if you would step out of your leftist humanities university bubble. One population conquers another population either culturally or through warfare as has been done since the beginning of time. Only this time, the populations being conquered aren’t even fighting back.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

You continue to ascribe certain views to me which I don’t hold. Why you place me in “leftist humanities university bubble” I have no idea. Do I agree or disagree with Barbara Lerner Spectre? I am not familiar enough with her work to answer that. Most likely we agree on some things and disagree on others.

Also, you continue to argue for the preservation of a certain status quo, but the status quo itself has been a moving target as I and some other commenters here pointed out.

Calling legal immigrants “invaders” is exactly the sort of xenophobiс behavior that this article is all about.

She promotes Jewish interests in Sweden while actively supporting a multicultural Sweden, which is de facto to the detriment of ethnic Swedes in an ethnic sense. Do you agree with her actions or not?

Never before in the history of humankind has travel been so widely available whether through airplane, train, or ship. It only took the loosening of immigration restrictions to see a tidal wave of vastly different peoples immigrate like never before seen in history. To preserve the ethnicities which created those nice civilizations which the third-world would like to immigrate to should be an instinct.

I am speaking in terms of biology and ethnicity, not legality. It doesn’t matter how it is done. The result is the same. “Xenophobic” means irrational fear of that which is different. The fear is rational, not irrational.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

If by multicultural Sweden you mean Sweden that’s home to Swedes, Finns, Saamis, Jews, etc. etc., yes I support multiethnic Sweden. But I don’t define “multiculturalism” as several/many ethnic groups living in the same country.

As for whether xenophobia is rational or irrational, even the discussion here make it perfectly clear that xenophobic views are all too often based on ignorance (of biology, history, etc.).

Realist T

What is the etc.? Somalis? Pakistanis? Swedes, Finns (Finland used to be part of Sweden), and Saamis are indigenous while Jews and etc., etc. not so. Do you also support an ethnocentric Jewish Israel? If so, you are the embodiment of why anti-Semitism is justified.

Xenophobia is by definition irrational. What this article calls “xenopobia” is not xenophobia because it is rational.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Who is or isn’t indigenous to any given country is a matter of how far in history you want to go. In the big schema of things everybody is indigenous to Africa. As far as Sweden is concerned, Saamis (and possibly Finns) are indigenous, but not the Swedes. You seem to be hooked onto a certain time frame and cannot see that it was different earlier than that.

Realist T

Your cultural Marxist mind tricks don’t work on me. I find it laughable that a linguistics professor is trying to play anthropologist. Language is by nature divorced of race because anyone can learn any language.

Completely wrong: not everyone is indigenous to Africa. Your understanding is so inadequate of the Out-of-Africa theory I now understand why there are naive college kids running around on the Internet thinking we are all Africans. Humans came out of Africa, yes, but continued their evolutions in the continents of their destinations. That is why we have the Europid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid meta-races. For all intents and purposes, the last places a population significantly evolved can be considered that splinter of humanity’s geographic origin. If you want to go all the way back to Africa when all of humanity was nothing like its present form then we might as well go all the way back to when we were amoebas in the ocean. Time absolutely needs a frame of reference or else it has no meaning, and it is convenient to use the last thousand years or so as a reference point. The Swedes and other Germanic Scandinavians have been in Scandinavia for the past 1000 years. I think that’s long enough to be considered indigenous. Come on Professor, you can do better than that.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Why take a 1000 years as your time frame for indigenization? Why not 2000 years or 3000 years? Also, I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of your position for the Jewish question. I will let you think about it on your own.

Realist T

I picked specifically 1000 for no particular reason except that it is long enough for ethnogenesis to take place. Swedish society was built in a time less than that and that time reference is all that really matters. It’s not in one or two generations, to say the least.

Well, the Jews have a nice country called Israel that receives billions of dollars in aid and weaponry from mostly USA and Germany. I think the original intentional was for all the Jews to live there, not use it as a home base while subverting other nations. I doubt USA would be so involved in wars in the Middle East if it weren’t for Israel and the Jewish lobby in USA.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Since you can’t think through the implications of your claims on your own, let me help you. About a 1000 years ago Jews lived in what is now Germany and Spain and elsewhere in Europe. Given your views, they should be considered indigenous there. Given what has happened to them there, how do you propose to remedy the situation?

As for Israel subverting other nations, I am not going to ask you to show some facts in support of this vile claim, as I know what sort of BS you’ll continue to spout. So before you call yourself a Realist, why don’t you actually learn something about reality? Since this discussion is entirely unproductive and uninstructive, I am closing it off.

Realist T

Hmm, interesting question. They must have migrated there from Middle East, yes? If that’s the case they have deep roots indeed. But if there were Europeans already there the Europeans would have deeper roots. And since they couldn’t find a way to live peacefully among those populations they should probably have found a different place to live for their own safety. But I don’t believe Jews had absolutely nothing to do with their own persecution.

I didn’t say Israel subverts other nations. I said Jews subvert other nations. I consider you to be a subversive agent if you teach white gentiles in USA that race and ethnicity don’t matter, we are all equal, blacks and whites should have relations, etc. It’s highly hypocritical of you and destructive, you as a Jew and a supporter of a Jewish Israel.

Well, alright then. I expected you to close the discussion off a long time ago. You don’t like to address the meat of the issue like another user said.

Realist T

Hmm, interesting question. They must have migrated there from Middle East, yes? If that’s the case they have deep roots indeed. But if there were Europeans already there the Europeans would have deeper roots. And since they couldn’t find a way to live peacefully among those populations they should probably have found a different place to live for their own safety. But I don’t believe Jews had absolutely nothing to do with their own persecution.

I didn’t say Israel subverts other nations. I said Jews subvert other nations. I consider you to be a subversive agent if you teach white gentiles in USA that race and ethnicity don’t matter, we are all equal, blacks and whites should have relations, etc. It’s highly hypocritical of you and destructive, you as a Jew and a supporter of a Jewish Israel.

Well, alright then. I expected you to close the discussion off a long time ago. You don’t like to address the meat of the issue like another user said.

Realist T

I destroyed you in logical debate so you deleted my comment? That’s very typical of the Left and academia. Which rules did I break, exactly? Is this how you treat your students, agree with me or you fail?

Your cultural Marxist mind tricks don’t work on me. I find it laughable that a linguistics professor is trying to play anthropologist. Language is by nature divorced of race because anyone can learn any language.

Completely wrong: not everyone is indigenous to Africa. Your understanding is so inadequate of the Out-of-Africa theory I now understand why there are naive college kids running around on the Internet thinking we are all Africans. Humans came out of Africa, yes, but continued their evolutions in the continents of their destinations. That is why we have the Europid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid meta-races. For all intents and purposes, the last places a population significantly evolved can be considered that splinter of humanity’s geographic origin. If you want to go all the way back to Africa when all of humanity was nothing like its present forms then we might as well go all the way back to when we were amoebas in the ocean. Time absolutely needs a frame of reference or else it has no meaning, and it is convenient to use the last few thousands of years or so as a reference point regarding humanity. The Swedes and other Germanic Scandinavians have been in Scandinavia for the past 1000 years. I think that’s long enough to be considered indigenous. Come on Professor, you can do better than that.

Guest

duplicate post; sorry, I thought you deleted my post.

Realist T

Sorry, I thought you deleted my post.

RoyColeman

It is more than reasonable to assert that the Swedes are ‘indigenous’ with evidence for 5000 years of Haplogroup H, now found in 47% of the modern population. The world’s ‘oldest’ state Japan is much younger by comparison..

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

There is no evidence that Swedes inhabited present-day Sweden 5000 years ago, as there’s hardly any way to talk about Swedes that far back. Even the Germanic people that were not yet differentiated into Swedes, Norwegians, Saxons, etc. go back a much shorter time than that. But at any rate, since you don’t distinguish ethnicity, state, genes, languages hardly any reasonable statements can be made on that basis.

And just out of curiosity, what haplogroup H do you have in mind? The mt-DNA haplogroup H, which is the most common mt-DNA haplogroup in Europe and is found on average among 41% of ALL Europeans, but is also very common in North Africa and the Middle East (over 60% among the Tuareg)? Or do you mean the Y-DNA haplogroup H, which is particularly common in South Asia, and is found in Europe in greatest frequency among the Roma people? So if as you say the “Swedish gene” is “Haplogroup H”, who are the “best Swedes”, the Tuareg or the Gypsies?!

I’m simply saying there has been genetic continuity of whatever H there for 5ky. Fair enough? Do the descendents from this Dna then have the right to claim to be “Swedish” since they defined its borders?

The “first” inhabitants of most geographic continental territories are probably now in a minority because they were likely hunter-gatherers where borders had little if any utility.

The “best Swedes”? That’s easy! Blue eyed blondes, mutations with the highest frequencies in Sweden and Finland, not found really in the Tuareg who I gather never really dispersed beyond the Pyrenees.
Fair enough? (No pun intended.)

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“whatever H there”—yep sounds scientific enough! The article you link to does not mention any haplogroup H. So why don’t you get your facts straight first?

While the said correlation works for the examples you listed, it has no general validity as far as I can tell, and the countries you compare are disparate in too many respects to say that the number of languages is somehow linked to the murder rate. If we look at neighboring countries that share much more in common, the correlation falls apart. What accounts for the differences in murder rates between Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, which have comparable numbers of languages and comparable population size? Or what about Suriname (19 languages per 493,000 population) and the neighboring Guyana (14 languages for 778,000 population)—if your correlation were right, we’d expect a higher murder rate in Suriname but quite the opposite is true? I could give many further examples, but I am sure you can do your own research.

RoyColeman

I’m speaking generally here. There’s a strong correlation between national poverty and language density. Only 3 of the 50 richest countries have more than 35 living languages, whereas 27 of the poorest 50 states have more. For you to say a correlation between language density and homicide does ‘not exist’ thus requires evidence that rich and poor countries have reasonably equivalent homicide rates, which is highly unlikely on the face of it. I’ll report back.

sammy

Why is that jew removing the truth

RoyColeman

You say “The bigger point is not whether or not this group or that has a right to
preserve its traditions, culture, language, etc. (preserve away!), but
that it must not be done at the expense of other peoples”
In fact it would require, for example, a disproportionate burden of health care research and spending on minority genetic afflictions such as sickle-cell anemia to redress inequality, precisely “at the expense of other peoples”.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

And what do you propose doing about other genetic afflictions, such as AT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia) that only a minority suffers from. After all, developing treatments for such diseases, whether or not they have an ethnic component, places an “unfair burden” on the majority who don’t have it?

RoyColeman

Petition the Warren Buffets of the world for funding, because governments are answerable to their majority interests, genetic and otherwise. There’d be an outcry here if the socialist South African government (one-third of its populace on welfare) was asked to fund research into “White” diseases like the congenital Ashkenazi cancer that my daughter’s schoolfriend succumbed to. Genetic differences remain politically important, despite those from Steven Gould to SirBelvedere either trivialising them or pretending they harbour a quaint 19th century reactionary agenda.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

You missed the point of my question: I am talking about genetic diseases that are not associated with any particular ethnic group. You position, if I understand it correctly, is that such people (children, actually, as most don’t live to be 18 currently) show just “suck it up” basically. This doesn’t seem to be in line with the socialist ideals of providing for all. What I personally find even worse, and really appalling actually (in a way, I am glad it’s come up!) is that it goes against the idea that the society should provide for (or support) those who are not able to do so for themselves for no fault of their own: the very sick, invalids, elderly, orphaned children, and the like. You seem to advocate for a society that provides health care to people who are generally healthy but have some minor, common, and temporary illness but not for those who—for no fault of their own or even of their parents—can work and pay for their health care. I find that abominable, sir!

RoyColeman

Here you ascribe to me what I did not say. Of course health care should be as inclusive as possible, my point is that there are always practical and political limits. There’s a deep irony here too – while a Saudi ‘royal’ sues Forbes for underestimating his obscene wealth his government asks for international help to deal with its SARS viral strain.
And while the Bantu majority government here publicly characterize the coloreds as a drunken ‘culture’ they remain oblivious to Stanford’s classification of genetic disorders, and spend zip on research into the alleviation of Khoi-san alcohol dependence.
Once again I merely noting that the issue of health care spending is not conveniently packaged into political ‘orientation’. The New Zealanders who historically shun left-wing Labour movements were the first to introduce modern inclusive welfare.

Thord Olavsson

Hello, I’m a Norwegian and Nordic nationalist and ethnic preservationist. You would probably label me a “far rightist”, but I don’t mind. Anything is better than being a far leftist.

I notice that you seem quite ignorant about ancient Scandinavian history and genetics, so I just had to enter this discussion in order to clear up some of your misconceptions about my people (the Scandinavians).

“As far as Sweden is concerned, Saamis (and possibly Finns) are indigenous, but not the Swedes.”

This is completely incorrect. If you want to discuss the origins and history of my people, at least get your facts straight. I find it “interesting” how you avoid backing up your outlandish claims with any substantial evidence at all. You could at least have made a try.

The truth is that a large percentage of Germanic Swedes’ ancestral roots have been present in Scandinavia for *at least* as long as the ancestors of the Saami. And why Finns should be more indigenous to Sweden than Swedes is a great mystery. I’d like to see an explanation of that.

To go through a few facts: The oldest northern European Y-DNA haplogroup is I1. This haplogroup occurs at a frequency of roughly 40% for the Germanic-Scandinavian (I use this term to emphasize that I am talking about a certain cultural-genetic-linguistic population in Scandinavia, and not just whoever happens to live there, or other native populations such as the Saami), and is most likely inherited from the ancient northern-European hunter-gatherer tribes, before genetic influences from Indo-European-speakers arrived for maybe about 5000 years ago (the Battle Axe culture in Scandinavia, connected to the continental Corded Ware horizon).

So this ancestral connection goes back into the mists of time prior to the forming of the Germanic peoples, language and culture. It can also be found among Saamis, but not at a higher level than among Swedes, Norwegians or Danes. That means that genetically speaking, the presence of Swedes in Scandinavia is at least as old as that of the Saami’s.

The genetic difference between Germanic-Scandinavians and the Saami is that while Germanic-Scandinavians have a significant genetic input from later migrations of Indo-European speakers (Y-DNA R1a, R1b…) which led to the forming of the Germanic ethnocultural sphere, the Saami genetics show a significant Uralic input (Y-DNA N1c), which hardly has been present in Scandinavia for a longer time than the Indo-European influence.

Conclusion: The Saami and Germanic-Scandinavian populations share a common ancestral connection (I1) being very ancient in Scandinavia, but the Saami have received an Uralic genetic input originally entering Scandinavia from the north, while the Germanic-Scandinavians were influenced by a genetic input originally entering Scandinavia from the south, via the central European continent. The Saami are more indigenous than the Scandinavians in far northern Scandinavia, but we (Norwegians, Swedes…) are more indigenous than the Saami in southern Scandinavia.

Now you will probably start arguing that because the Germanic-Scandinavian population (the Nordics) was shaped by more than one migration, we do not have a right to make a claim to this territory and should rather be mixed out of existence over time. What matters isn’t *how* we came into existence. We do not need to have a “pure” origin going back millions of years in time to have a right to exist and defend our own interests, which includes defending who we are. What matters is that we are a unique people with our own history, our own ancestral/genetic background, our own identity, and our own territory. Myself and many other Nordics are willing to defend this until death. We do not care that “politically correct” anti-European leftist academics such as yourself think we should tolerate that our homelands are flooded by ethnic aliens, undermining our ethnic and territorial integrity. Stopping the immigration invasion of our homelands is our sacred duty as members of this people. For every year that this sick postmodern development continues our domination and position in these lands are weakened and undermined, and the future of our children will be less Nordic than what was the case for our grandparents. From an ethnic perspective, this is unforgivable. It is the worst treason we have ever witnessed as a people, and it must be stopped.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Let’s get this straight. According to your own “facts”, the “Swedish gene” is Y-DNA haplogroup I1, which only about 35% of Swedes actually possess. So 65% of (ethno-linguo-genetic) Swedes aren’t Swedes? Nice! By the way, this same haplogroup is even more frequent among the Finns (I couldn’t find data on Saamis), so Finns are even more “Swedish”/indigenous than the Swedes? Oh wait, isn’t it what I said?

And you can call me “”politically correct” anti-European leftist academic” or whatever you like, but I think that “the worst treason we have ever witnessed” is that you “Nordic nationalists and ethnic preservationists” so concerned with “ethnic and territorial integrity” forced the bloody Oslo accords on Israel, even after your pitiful record during the Holocaust, destroying or driving away all of the Jews from your country.

The bigger point is not whether or not this group or that has a right to preserve its traditions, culture, language, etc. (preserve away!), but that it must not be done at the expense of other peoples. Because who cares about them, they are beneath your “master race” (and I mean this generally, because every xenophobe thinks they are they ones on the top of the pile!). That placing yourself at the top and thinking that only YOUR children’s future matters is what xenophobia is.

Thord Olavsson

“Let’s get this straight. According to your own “facts”, the “Swedish gene” is Y-DNA haplogroup I1, which only about 35% of Swedes actually possess.”

No, you put words into my mouth. I’d expect better from a professor, but I guess the standards can’t be too high in the contemporary American academic system.

Y-DNA haplogroup I1 represents the oldest genetic element in northern Europe, and then I mean *really* ancient. The first tribes who settled here when the ice retreated. That is thus the oldest connection that modern ethnic Scandinavians have going back into the ancient northern European past, but the haplogroup itself dates back to the times prior to the forming of the Germanic peoples and thus the modern Swedes. Swedes properly speaking did not exist at the time when the I1 mutation occurred, since it was so long ago. Those people is an important part of our ancestry, letting us trace our roots back to the most ancient of times in Scandinavia, but our people is also a result of later historical developments, such as the introduction of Indo-European language and genetics, probably starting from about 5000 years ago.

You deny the existence of ethnic Swedes because you do not think their origin is pure enough, but Swedes (or Scandinavians/Nordics more generally) exist as a unique ethnic group with their own origins. The fact that this origin does not exclusively consist of the ancient northern European hunter-gatherers, but also Indo-European influences, changes nothing. That is an integral part of who we are.

“which only about 35% of Swedes actually possess. So 65% of (ethno-linguo-genetic) Swedes aren’t Swedes?”

Use your brain, alternatively read a bit more about genetics. You need it. 35-40% of all Swedes carry I1 as their direct paternal male lineage, defined by mutations in the y-chromosome that is inherited from grandfather, to father, to son, etc. But the fact that a Swede might not carry I1 as his direct paternal lineage, which represents only a tiny bit of his overall ancestry, doesn’t mean that he is any less influenced by genetics from those ancient northern hunter-gatherers. Imagine that his maternal grandfather carried I1 as his haplogroup. Genetically, this Swede is no less related to his maternal grandfather than to his paternal grandfather, even though he carries the haplogroup of his paternal grandfather. Let us compare it to surnames: The fact that I carry the surname of my father and paternal grandfather doesn’t mean I am more related to them genetically speaking than to my mother and the maternal side of the family. If you have studied your family history at any point, you will know that there are lots of surnames to be found among your ancestors when you go back in time, not just the surname that you carry yourself. Swedes have more or less the same genetic origins, even though they may have different haplogroups. That is because thus ancient genetic influences have been completely assimilated in the entire population ages ago. All Swedes are descended from both I1 and R1b people, to make an example, even though not all Swedes can carry these haplogroups in the y-chromosome for obvious reasons. It is only possible to have one.

“By the way, this same haplogroup is even more frequent among the Finns”

Notice how I1 is less common in those areas of Sweden with most Saami, and how it is most common in those areas of Finland with most Swedish genetic influence… The most common haplogroup among Finns and the Saami is N1c.

“so Finns are even more “Swedish”/indigenous than the Swedes? Oh wait, isn’t it what I said?”

Yes, you said so, but I proved you wrong as usual.

“And you can call me “”politically correct” anti-European leftist academic” or whatever you like, but I think that “the worst treason we have ever witnessed” is that you “Nordic nationalists and ethnic preservationists” so concerned with “ethnic and territorial integrity” forced the bloody Oslo accords on Israel, even after your pitiful record during the Holocaust, destroying or driving away all of the Jews from your country.”

Now I am not at all concerned with the fate of Israel, because you Jews or Israelis have not shown that you care about the demographic future of Europe. But with that said, it wasn’t exactly the Norwegian people that was responsible for the Oslo accords, which should be damn obvious. And “pitiful records during the Holocaust”? How typical of you to always bring up the Eternal Holocaust. You want to lay collective guilt on an entire people because of something that most of the people was not responsible for, and least of all those young Norwegians who live today. But you demonstrated a very important point. You hate all of Europe because of what happened during WWII, and you want to deny us a future of our own because of it. In your eyes, and in the eyes of many other Jews, all Europeans are collectively guilty for the suffering of Jews for all eternity, and none of us have a right to fight for our own ethnic or national interests because of it. This is the kind of mentality that leads to genocide, whether it is hard or soft. Your Holocaust is outdated. No modern native Europeans are responsible for it, so get over it and stop being so hateful.

“The bigger point is not whether or not this group or that has a right to preserve its traditions, culture, language, etc. (preserve away!), but that it must not be done at the expense of other peoples.”

The mass immigration of ethno-culturally incompatible non-Europeans to Europe that we have witnessed the last decades, changing the ethnic, racial and cultural composition of Europe at a quicker pace than at any previous point in recorded European history, goes at the expense of the native European peoples. There’s nothing wrong about showing solidarity with other peoples and helping them when that is possible, but our duty is first of all to our own, just like your duty is first to your own family and children, to make a valid comparison. Stopping the massive immigration flow to Europe might go at the expense of certain individuals who would have liked to immigrate, but that is nothing compared to the treason it is to allow for such a dramatic demographic change to happen so quickly on our continent because of political ideas. Sometimes one has no choice but to prioritize. Who will we prioritize? Our own people and their future, or abstract ideas about multiculturalism and a global village? The answer should be obvious to any mentally healthy European.

“Because who cares about them, they are beneath your “master race” “

How immature of you. I might prefer my own race as a whole to other races because it is my own, but I have not uttered a word about any “master race”. If anything, maybe you should look to your Jewish heritage that exalts Jews as “the Chosen People” and deem them as superior to gentiles. The oldest ideas about a master race may be found in the Jewish lore. Do you still believe in those ideas?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Because of personally offensive remarks, your comment has been deleted in accordance with GeoCurrents commenting policy (http://geocurrents.info/about). If you care to write your comment without such remarks, I’ll be happy to respond.

Thord Olavsson

OK, I don’t really see what was so very offensive about it, when considering some other remarks that have been let through the censorship in this debate, and when considering some rude remarks you have posted yourself. But anyhow, I will post it again and edit some passages. Hopefully it will be let through this time.

“Let’s get this straight. According to your own “facts”, the “Swedish gene” is Y-DNA haplogroup I1, which only about 35% of Swedes actually possess.”

No, you put words into my mouth. Y-DNA I1 is one genetic component without which the Nordic peoples would have their distinct and unique ethnic character, but it’s not the entire picture.

Y-DNA haplogroup I1 represents the oldest genetic element in northern Europe, and then I mean *really* ancient. The first tribes who settled here when the ice retreated. That is thus the oldest connection that modern ethnic Scandinavians have going back into the ancient northern European past, but the haplogroup itself dates back to the times prior to the forming of the Germanic peoples and thus the modern Swedes. Swedes properly speaking did not exist at the time when the I1 mutation occurred, since it was so long ago. Those people is an important part of our ancestry, letting us trace our roots back to the most ancient of times in Scandinavia, but our people is also a result of later historical developments, such as the introduction of Indo-European language and genetics, probably starting from about 5000 years ago.

You deny the existence of ethnic Swedes because you do not think their origin is pure enough, but Swedes (or Scandinavians/Nordics more generally) exist as a unique ethnic group with their own origins. The fact that this origin does not exclusively consist of the ancient northern European hunter-gatherers, but also Indo-European influences, changes nothing. That is an integral part of who we are.

“which only about 35% of Swedes actually possess. So 65% of (ethno-linguo-genetic) Swedes aren’t Swedes?”

Please read a bit more about genetics. 35-40% of all Swedes carry I1 as their direct paternal male lineage, defined by mutations in the y-chromosome that is inherited from grandfather, to father, to son, etc. But the fact that a Swede might not carry I1 as his direct paternal lineage, which represents only a tiny bit of his overall ancestry, doesn’t mean that he is any less influenced by genetics from those ancient northern hunter-gatherers. Imagine that his maternal grandfather carried I1 as his haplogroup. Genetically, this Swede is no less related to his maternal grandfather than to his paternal grandfather, even though he carries the haplogroup of his paternal grandfather. Let us compare it to surnames: The fact that I carry the surname of my father and paternal grandfather doesn’t mean I am more related to them genetically speaking than to my mother and the maternal side of the family. If you have studied your family history at any point, you will know that there are lots of surnames to be found among your ancestors when you go back in time, not just the surname that you carry yourself. Swedes have more or less the same genetic origins, even though they may have different haplogroups. That is because thus ancient genetic influences have been completely assimilated in the entire population ages ago. All Swedes are descended from both I1 and R1b people, to make an example, even though not all Swedes can carry these haplogroups in the y-chromosome for obvious reasons. It is only possible to have one.

“By the way, this same haplogroup is even more frequent among the Finns”

Notice how I1 is less common in those areas of Sweden with the highest concentration of Saami people, and how it is more common in those areas of Finland with most Swedish genetic influence… The most common haplogroup among Finns and the Saami is N1c, which according to the consensus among population geneticists arrived at a later point than I1.

“so Finns are even more “Swedish”/indigenous than the Swedes? Oh wait, isn’t it what I said?”

Yes, you said so, but I proved you wrong.

And you can call me “”politically correct” anti-European leftist academic” or whatever you like, but I think that “the worst treason we have ever witnessed” is that you “Nordic nationalists and ethnic preservationists” so concerned with “ethnic and territorial integrity” forced the bloody Oslo accords on Israel, even after your pitiful record during the Holocaust, destroying or driving away all of the Jews from your country.”

Now I am not at all concerned with the fate of Israel, because you Jews or Israelis have not shown that you care about the demographic future of Europe. But with that said, it wasn’t exactly the Norwegian people that was responsible for the Oslo accords, which should be quite obvious. And “pitiful records during the Holocaust”? It is quite typical of Jews to always bring up the Eternal Holocaust to win cheap points in debates. By doing this you strengthen stereotypes about Jews, which you must understand is unfortunate. It seems like you want to lay collective guilt on an entire people because of something that most of the people was not responsible for, and least of all those young Norwegians who live today. Do you really hate all of Europe because of what happened during WWII, and want to deny us a future of our own because of it? It is unfortunately the case that in the eyes of many Jews, all Europeans are collectively guilty for the suffering of Jews for all eternity, and none of us have a right to fight for our own ethnic or national interests because of it. This is the kind of mentality that leads to genocide, whether it is hard or soft. Your Holocaust is outdated. No modern native Europeans are responsible for it, so get over it and stop being so hateful. That is what you come across as when you throw the Holocaust at us in such a way.

“The bigger point is not whether or not this group or that has a right to preserve its traditions, culture, language, etc. (preserve away!), but that it must not be done at the expense of other peoples.”

The mass immigration of ethno-culturally incompatible non-Europeans to Europe that we have witnessed the last decades, changing the ethnic, racial and cultural composition of Europe at a quicker pace than at any previous point in recorded European history, goes at the expense of the native European peoples. There’s nothing wrong about showing solidarity with other peoples and helping them when that is possible, but our duty is first of all to our own, just like your duty is first to your own family and children, to make a valid comparison. Stopping the massive immigration flow to Europe might go at the expense of certain individuals who would have liked to immigrate, but that is nothing compared to the treason it is to allow for such a dramatic demographic change to happen so quickly on our continent because of political ideas. Sometimes one has no choice but to prioritize. Who will we prioritize? Our own people and their future, or abstract ideas about multiculturalism and a global village? The answer should be obvious to any mentally healthy European.

“Because who cares about them, they are beneath your “master race” “

Straw-man. I might prefer my own race as a whole to other races because it is my own, but I have not uttered a word about any “master race”. If anything, maybe you should look to your Jewish heritage that exalts Jews as “the Chosen People” and deem them as superior to gentiles. The oldest ideas about a master race may be found in the Jewish lore. Do your people still believe in those ideas?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“I don’t really see what was so very offensive about it”–haha, since you omitted all of them in this comment, as far as I can see, you actually knew full well what was offensive and rude in what you had said and still chose to behave rudely. This reflects badly only on you. And it forces me to assume that you said it out of spite (and weakness of arguments, perhaps) rather than because you parents didn’t teach you to be civil and polite when you were a little child. As for your statement that some of my comments here are rude, see, it’s MY site (or rather “our site”), I am the host and you are the guest. Just as you don’t like people to come to your country and behave uncivilly (oh wait, you don’t like people to come to your country, period!), we don’t allow people to come and behave uncivilly on our site! If you don’t like it, just don’t come here.

Regarding putting words into the other’s mouth, I didn’t do so, but you did: “You deny the existence of ethnic Swedes”—I don’t deny the existence of ethnic Swedes, I just don’t think that it’s purely a matter of blood/genes. Do you?

Regarding the Holocaust, I find your reply abominable! Six million Jews were destroyed in gas chambers and the like just because they were Jewish—that’s more than the total population of Norway today! I am not saying that individual Europeans today are responsible for it, but I do think that as a country and as an ethnic group, Norwegians bear some responsibility alongside the Germans, the Poles, etc. But unlike those others, Norwegians never recognized it. What is even more worrisome and disgusting than the refusal of today’s Europeans to recognize the Holocaust and even the ability to justify it, as you do here, is that they continue with the same sort of vile anti-Semitism that brought it about in the first place. We’ve written about it extensively here on GeoCurrents and I also did on my other blog (LanguagesoftheWorld.info). My colleagues and I did a study of newspaper coverage, comparing the language of headlines, of the same event in various European newspapers, and Norwegian headlines were among the most deceitful of the ones we’ve looked at. Given that, I am not at all surprised at your views: when one is exposed to a constant torrent of such anti-Semitic media, it’s not surprising that one’s senses are dulled.

As for the concept of the Chosen People, I sugest you read a bit more about it, and not in the Norwegian press. There’s probably a library where you live and there’s probably books in it on the subject. Just very briefly, as someone has already alluded to in this discussion, it basically means “being at the forefront” of improving the world for EVERYBODY, having additional responsibilities not superiority. I don’t see that the Germanic master race concept even compares.

Silva

Yes, the Judaic (fortunately there are Atheist Jews) view is *far* more insulting: Nazis merely believe “victory for the best” and that it’s them*, while Jews who may or may not include you believe you were Chosen, to suffer magnificently, to help little ungrateful Me**.

*: funny how they were beaten by many ethnicities united under Communist leadership, though.

**: in fact, hey, doesn’t that stupid idea make the Holocaust part of YHWH’s own Plan?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I would suggest you read up on the issues before making comments that reveal your ignorance. On the Jewish concept of Chosenness, as I mentioneed in an earlier comment here, the idea is that the Jews are chosen for stricter observance of moral rules, for making the world a better place for everything, not for extra “perks” or extra suffering.

The Nazis were “beaten” by many ethnicities, some under Communist, some under Capitalist leadership.

As for the Holocaust and God, that’s too big of an issue to be address in a brief comment, but there’s plenty written on it, and I will refer you to greater mind who have written on this than myself.

Silva

So, everybody should let anything else occupy their territory, except Israelis, who should just have demanded and gotten the West Bank regardless of how many Arabs were there?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Silva, don’t you know that the West Bank was captured by Israel in a defensive war from Jordan (not some Palestinian Authority that didn’t even exist at the time)? Plenty of countries hold territories that they captured in war, whether defensive or offensive, so why the double standard in requiring only Israel to relinguish its territory?

Realist T

Hmm, interesting question. They must have migrated there from Middle East, yes? If that’s the case they have deep roots indeed. But if there were Europeans already there the Europeans would have deeper roots. And since they couldn’t find a way to live peacefully among those populations they should probably have found a different place to live for their own safety. But I don’t believe Jews had absolutely nothing to do with their own persecution.

I didn’t say Israel subverts other nations. I said Jews subvert other nations. I consider you to be a subversive agent if you teach white gentiles in USA that race and ethnicity don’t matter, we are all equal, blacks and whites should have relations, etc. It’s highly hypocritical of you and destructive, you as a Jew and a supporter of a Jewish Israel.

Well, alright then. I expected you to close the discussion off a long time ago. You don’t like to address the meat of the issue like another user said…

Andrew Davies

You seem to think that Pakistanis and Nigerians mixing with the English is the absolute equivalent of Norwegians mixing with Anglo-Saxons. By the same logic, Mixing vanilla ice cream with rotting squid should produce as pleasing a result as mixing it with blueberries. As a Stanford professor, surely you realize the sort of fallacious argument you are making here… perhaps you assume we do not? There were, by the way, centuries of strife, warfare, and bloodshed involved in the process of assimilating even one relatively closely related Germanic group into another. And a thousand years from now, when Britain is populated by this new and abominable melange you posit, they will identify and relate to the culture of Chaucer and Bede as their own? I won’t hold my breath for that one.

So do you truly wish to insult our intelligence with the argument that “we are doing it to ourselves?” Noam Chomsky and other cultural marxists casually speak at conferences (where they imagine the attendees all share their thought processes) about education being “indoctrination,” and that the goal in the education of women is meant specifically to lower the birthrate. This social engineering agenda to destroy the family-oriented value system and other culture in the West has been ongoing for the past 100 years at least. You mean to say you did not know about this? Or perhaps you assume we do not? Today the agenda is gay marriage and convincing little children that they were “born in the wrong body” and that they need to have a sex change operation to “correct” this condition. Of course this will leave them sterile, but this warped society is perfectly fine with cheering one more avenue of destroying the multiplicative proclivities of the “evil white patriarchy,” while procliaming that all opposition to this agenda is somehow “hate.”

Look, we know the tricks and they don’t work on us. They might work on the dumbed-down masses with their pesticide-ridden gmo diet who watch TV all day, but we know what you’re up to. We know what Bernays and Lukacs and their fellow travellers have been up to for decades. We know what the goal is, and that’s a big problem, and it’s why getting tenured at a university or any other form of success is denied us. The lie does not tolerate the light.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

What is abominable is the amount of hatred that’s oozing from your comment. “Rotting squid”, “abominable melange”—you are getting close to having your comments erased in accordance with our comments policy. But strikes me the most is the ignorance of history behind your comments. You say: “There were, by the way, centuries of strife, warfare, and bloodshed
involved in the process of assimilating even one relatively closely
related Germanic group into another.” That’s really not true. There was less than a century during which the Vikings raided Britain, burning down monasteries, stealing valuables etc. They were not immigrating to Britain but going home after the raid. When the Vikings started settling in Britain, there was some mutual fighting between the groups, but not more so than between people that can be said to belong to the same ethnic group elsewhere. You can read more about it here:

I notice that you didn’t care to debate the meat of my argument, but were more interested in attaching the typical pejorative labels of “hate” and “ignorance” in the common tactic to silence dissent. It should be obvious that rotting squid (which is a delicacy in parts of Asia) makes a very incompatible mix with vanilla ice cream, as do non-Europeans make a very incompatible mix with Europeans. But you are simply proving my point… to claim that the two groups are incompatible is heresy against the religion of political correctness, and that heresy must be summarily silenced, as must all opposition to white genocide.

This is all psyche warfare, and whether witting or unwitting, you are siding with the group which wishes to annihilate my people, and myself taking offense to that is not allowed. I am to be silenced and deprived of employment, even imprisoned as more “thought crime” legislation is passed. The agenda is clear enough to myself and many others… “shut up and die, whitey.” From my perspective, the hatred is all on the other side.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Unlike you, I actually do not wish to annihilate anyone individually or as a group. Funny how you project your own attitudes onto your opponenets. You’ve ended your comment with attributing hatred to those who oppose your views, but you started the post with how bad it is to do so. The only people I hate is ignorant zealots. All that this discussion has shown is how ignorant of history and biology the xenophobic side is. That in itself is quite instructive, but now that we’ve all seen that, I don’t see much reason for you to continue with the name-calling and the like.

Andrew Davies

And where did the name-calling start? How about in the original article, where Mayfield uses the “xenophobic” pejorative, along with many other prejudicial linguistic mechanisms. And then to claim to be neutral? The truth is certainly a battered child here.

I know my opponents well, because they all read from the same playbook. The agenda is to destroy the European peoples through inter-ethnic strife and the dilution of their genetics and culture, and to claim anything else is going on is to insult my intelligence and that of every victimized European. You’re just being coy to proclaim that this population replacement is anything other than war, in which the major bought-off parties and elites in the various countries fight for the enemy of the peoples.

The real question is, who do Barbara Specter and Benjamin Abtan think they are to subvert other people’s nations by creating groups disingenuously calling themselves “anti-racist” or “anti-fascist,” or whatever linguistic lie might be the order of the day, with the expressed purpose of subverting and destroying European ethnicities? Why is it almost always Jews leading the way in promoting third-world immigration to Europe, and then when anyone opposes this genocidal rape of their nations, those people are slapped with epithets… “hater,” “antisemitic,” “xenophobe,” “racist,” fascist,” “nazi,” etc. Who is calling whom names? Again, it is we Europeans who are under vicious subterfugal attack here, and this should be quite obvious to any truly neutral observer who is mature enough to have overcome the indoctrination being forced down their throats by the schools, media and generally indoctrinated peers.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Actually, the name-calling did not start with the article. James used a technical, neutral term “xenophobia” in a clearly defined way. For some reasonm you and your friends here decided that it was offensive to you—why? Because you realize how hateful, racist, nazi-like your position is, perhaps? So political correcteness, i.e. “don’t use terms like xenophobia or you’ll offend us”, as well as direct claims about me personally, started on your side of this debate. You know, folks, I am laughing out loud when you keep calling me a “leftist Marxist blah-blah-blah”—you don’t know me or my views and your statements to that effect are ridiculous

As for “why is it almost always Jews leading the way” in fighting bigotry, racial and ethnic hatred and the like? Perhaps because the Jews better than any other people know where such things lead to? So shame on the other ethnic groups for not leading the way. Because maybe if they did, they wouldn’t need to troll online forums and write some stupid stuff about 5000 year old presence of Swedes in Sweden and the like.

Ygor Coelho Soares

Excuse me, sir, but you are directly offending hundreds of millions of descendants of Europeans with non-Europeans in the whole world, especially in the Americas. I don’t think the many hundreds of millions of people whose roots are in European and non-European (Amerindian and/or African, with a small minority of Asians, too) in Latin America and, ever more increasingly, in North America are a proof of any “incompatible mix”. You are making up these things because you equate Whiter = more compatible. In that sense, by the way, many Middle Eastern people are perfectly “more compatible” with Europeans than other Asiatic and especially African peoples, because both in looks and genetic makeup it is absolutely certain that the peoples more akin to Europeans are those indigenous to Turkey, Berber (even if now Arabized) North Africa and Levantine regions like Lebanon and Syria. Many of them are definitely White, even if not to the same degree of the whitest European ethnicities. So that should mean they form a more “compatible mix” with Europeans or something like that? Now THAT “incompatibility of mixing” theory is abominable and with no scientific and even historical base.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“Remember that humans share 98.5% of their DNA with chimpanzees and 70%
with potatoes. To pretend that all racial/ethnic differences are
accountable to upbringing and a top-down imposed culture is childish and
not facing reality.” — You contradict yourself: since there is so little genetic difference among humans of all races, nationalities, whatever, it must the case that a lot of the differences are cultural.

SirBedevere

When thinking about identifying the region of origin genetically, you might be thinking about mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother and not actually expressed in the phenotype. As for genetic Swedishness, if one’s concern were the preservation of a tradition, any definition that would include Ann Margret, but exclude Marcus Samuelsson would be utterly useless for that purpose.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Love the Marcus Samuelsson reference. Don’t tell me you are another “Chopped” fan?

SirBedevere

I’ve seen some episodes, but my wife never misses it. Our second date was at Samuelsson’s Akvavit.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Hah! I love the show. Is Akvavit any good? I am going to be in NYC next month…

SirBedevere

I loved the food (and drink) at Akvavit and she loved the art of the food. Unfortunately, she doesn’t eat seafood or game, so she ended up having only the world’s best (and most expensive) whipped turnips.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Well I love both seafood and game so I’ll put it on my list for the trip…

Thord Olavsson

“When thinking about identifying the region of origin genetically, you might be thinking about mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited from the mother and not actually expressed in the phenotype.”

It doesn’t appear as if you know much about population genetics.

It is not primarily mitochondrial DNA that is used to decide somebody’s ethnicity or racial/continental origin. Mitochondrial DNA (like Y-DNA) only accounts for one direct ancestral lineage, and hypothetically speaking (although it would be rare) it is possible to be fully Negroid genetically speaking while still having a typically European mtDNA haplogroup. This is because a distant ancestor could be European, while most of the European genetic characteristics were out-bred over many generations, with the mtDNA haplogroup remaining for obvious reasons.

Population geneticists are analysing a large number of genetic markers when deciding a person’s origin, not only one.

In another comment you talked about “a Swedish gene”, which is complete nonsense and a straw-man tactic. Who claimed there would have to exist one single Swedish gene for there to be a genetic basis to the native Swedish population? This is the typical retarded “there is no gene for race” argument that is frequently used by “anti-racists” who are particularly ignorant about population genetics.

What characterizes the Swedish population and makes it distinctly Swedish is a certain distribution of genes among the population, which makes any random ethnic Swede more similar to any other random Swede than to any random member of a genetically different population (say, Zulus or Japanese). This is because Swedes do only share very distant ancestors with the Zulus or the Japanese (according to the Out of Africa theory), while they as Swedes share a recent ancestral origin, and are therefore closer related genetically speaking. The evolutionary history of Swedes and Zulus differs, since they parted long ago. Further on: what makes Swedes more similar to the French than to Indians, for instance, is because they as Europeans share a more recent evolutionary history.

Relevant quote from the book “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” by physicist and anthropologist Gregory Cochran and the anthropologist and population geneticist Henry Harpending:

“Members of the general public sometimes believe that individual genetic profiles do not necessarily reflect nationality. Somebody who is Swedish, for example, might be genetically closer to someone from Japan than to another Swede, according to this view of things. However, this belief is false. In fact, a case where a person of one nationality is closer genetically to someone of a distant nationality than to his or her own compatriots never happens. If you’re Swedish, every Swede (not counting immigrants) is genetically closer to you than any person in Japan.

It’s possible to be closer to someone in Japan if you consider only one gene: Both of you might have the same blood type while your next-door neighbour might not, for example. Nevertheless, it is somewhat more likely that your neighbour will have the same blood type as you, since the frequency of blood types varies according to nationality. If you look over the whole genome – about 20,000 genes – with a match with your neighbour being somewhat more likely for every single gene, the chance of the overall match with someone Japanese being closer than the match with your neighbour becomes vanishingly small.

Think of it this way: when you make a bet on the casino, the odds favor the house, although not overwhelmingly so. You might win the first bet – it’s not that unlikely. But what is the chance that you’ll win most of the time over the course of a year – win the majority out of thousands of bets, with the odds against you on every one? The probability of that happening is vanishingly small, which is why the house always wins in the long run.

As a practical matter, if you can distinguish between the members of two populations by looking at them, genetic analysis will be able to do so as well. And sometimes it will be able to make such distinctions when you can’t tell by looking at them.”

SirBedevere

Oh, not a straw man, I assure you. Rather, simple ignorance of population genetics, as you point out, and thank you for the discussion. In this case, however, I still fail to see the relevance of genetics. What can be so important about connecting a particular chain of amino acids with a particular location on the planet. If there is a Herderian Volksgeist, surely it resides, as Herder himself thought, in language and other cultural features. All of my mother-in-law’s ancestors, for instance, came from the Rhineland, but they have been in what is now the United States since the early eighteenth century. There are very few traces of German culture in her, though I imagine she is genetically as “German” as anyone. On the other hand, I have met any number of people who are culturally quite German, but genetically something else, I suppose. As I say, a genetic definition of Swedish, for instance, would include any number of Minnesota Swedes, whose understanding of Swedish culture might be limited to making a rather strange sort of Jell-O salad, while it would exclude a Marcus Samuelsson, whose upbringing sounds as Swedish as any. As I said to another commenter, any definition of nation that excludes such well-known nationalists as Pushkin, Petofi, Hviezdoslav, Napoleon, Disraeli and Sarkozy is not a definition that has any relation to national tradition.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

The key problem goes back to the definition of xenophobia. While our opponenets try as they might to present it as rational rather than irrational, all they were able to prove the old truth that any such nationalist idea contradicts itself. P.S. Pushkin didn’t think of himself as an “epitome Russian”, it’s the Russian nationalists after his time that made him that (“наше все”).

Charles_Dilkes

I don’t think anybody is suggesting that Swedish ethnicity is defined through genetics or science; but rather, Swedish people do have a genetic (autosome) likeness – which is an enormously different proposition. Population genetics is not really that difficult – at its most rudimentary, people who are most phenotypically alike can usually be grouped in the same genetic cluster. Given that, your point about Pushkin, for example, is irrelevant.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

You are correct in saying that “what characterizes the Swedish population and makes it distinctly
Swedish is a certain distribution of genes among the population”, but you conclusion that “any random ethnic Swede more similar to any other random Swede
than to any random member of a genetically different population (say,
Zulus or Japanese)” is not correct. Because the gene distribution necesarily characterizes a population, there’s no way to define the “Swedish genetic signature” or “the Swedish gene” (the latter term in its technical sense is completely incorrect here, but that’s what non-geneticists most typically use). To use a non-genetic metaphor, if 35% or 40% of Swedes eat meatballs three days a week, it doesn’t mean that any Swede is necessarily having meatballs for dinner today. Nor does it mean that Swedes who can’t stand meatballs are any less “Swedish” than those who love them.

Thord Olavsson

Read my post again, including that quote by the physicist and anthropologist Gregory Cochran and the anthropologist and population geneticist Henry Harpending.

Yes, what I said is correct. The overall distribution of genes in the Swedish population, such as it has been shaped over thousands of years by genetic selection and shared ancestry, does indeed mean that any ethnic Swede is closer related to any other ethnic Swede than to any member of a more distant ethnicity, such as the Japanese, Amerindian tribes, black African tribes, Australian aborigines, Arabs, etc. This is why population geneticists are able to analyze the DNA of an unknown person, and decide which of the greater racial groups (say, Europeans) or which ethnic variations within this greater group that he might have belonged to. While it is extremely easy to identify whether a person is of Swedish or Chinese ancestry, for instance, it is not possible to clearly distinguish between closely related ethnic groups such as Norwegians and Swedes, because they share such a recent ancestral origin, and have been shaped by the same ancient migrations. In the case of Norwegians and Swedes, this is even visible if studying other collective attributes, such as culture and language, both of which are very similar (the languages are for example mutually intelligible). If we look at genetic cluster analyses, which places members of different populations in proportion to one another depending on how closely related they are genetically, we will see that members who identity as members of an ethnic group will cluster much closer to one another than with members of different ethnic groups. The more obvious the ethnic difference is, the farther apart from one another they will cluster on the genetic map.

“To use a non-genetic metaphor, if 35% or 40% of Swedes eat meatballs three days a week, it doesn’t mean that any Swede is necessarily having meatballs for dinner today”

That is true of course. But let us consider closely related members of the same family, for example a mother and a daughter. The daughter will have gene variations that the mother doesn’t, and the mother will have gene variations that the daughter doesn’t have. If considering only one specific variation, the daughter might appear to be more closely related to a person who is not even a distant relative. But still, when considering the complete picture and not just a limited part of it, the mother is infinitely more similar to the daughter genetically than the vast majority of persons on the planet, with the exception of a few other close relatives (such as father, siblings, etc). The same is true for ethnic and racial groups.

RoyColeman

The Yoruba are often considered a genetic reference ‘outgroup’. In the case of the Han, it is known that they are absolutely (not statistically) distinguishable from the Yoruba and vice-versa, any random individual from either population has 100% concordance with its own group and 0% with the other. The Chinese at least can claim there are indeed “Races”

RoyColeman

Mayfield does us a disservice suggesting this is merely a ‘Right Wing’ phenomenon. Its mild manifestation in Europe is not representative of a rather more complex world, xenophobia transcends political ideology.
Pol Pot exhorted Cambodians to each kill thirty Vietnamese, neither exactly right-wing governments of the day. China, the extreme case, simply never allows immigration. In Australia in the 1940s Labour campaigned that “Two Wongs don’t make a White” and the longest serving Liberal party in history barred Jewish immigration to Canada.
Xenophobia (and by definition) is not even superficially about culture, race or poverty.
Somali shopkeepers are murdered here in South Africa not because they don’t contribute productively as would be hard to in Sweden, but because they do it too well – they out-compete the locals.

EuroNationalist

In one crucial respect the definition of Swedish has NOT changed: Swedes have always been native Europeans, of white racial origin, speaking a North Germanic language. The new “Swedes” do not come from Europe, are not white, and do not speak Swedish as their indigenous language.

It is typical of liberals to reduce complex existences such as being White down to their most basic, and infact incorrect (e.g East Asians also have light skin), constitute parts such as having white skin, thus having low melanin levels in their skin. Having peach-coloured skin is an indicator of European racial and cultural heritage, but it does not define it in sum total.

Your argument is failed in another respect – being Swedish necessitates being white, but also exists outside of it. If Swedes are As and Whites are Bs, all As are Bs, but not all Bs are As. If the only definer of being Swedish is B, there would be nothing to differentiate B from A. But there is.

There are almost no legal Muslim immigrants to Israel, compared to many tens of millions of Muslims into the white heartlands of Europe, America and Australia. Why is that?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Again, it seems that you mixing up the notion of Swedes as an ethnic (or more precisly linguistic) group and that of Swedes as people of Sweden (which would include in the very least Finns, who don’t speak a Germanic language, and Saamis which are quite distinct from both Swedes and Finns genetically). Are you suggesting that Finns and Saamis have no place in Sweden? If you so, your “indigeous” argument fails, as Finns and Saamis lived in Sweden before Swedes did…

As for the question of Muslim immigrants to Israel, you make it sound as if Israel disallows Muslims to come. Do you have any facts to substantiate that. You may be surprised, but there is a large Muslim minority in Israel, subject to the same laws as Jewish citizens (and there’s also Christian Arabs, other Christians, Druze, etc.). More importantly you fail to recognize that Jews itself is a multiethnic group, by any of the definitions you used to define “Swedes” (racial origin, language, etc.). So Israel is hardly a uniethnic, uni-religious, or uni-anything country.

Charles_Dilkes

Swedes are not a ‘linguistic’ group – they’re an ethnic group that happen to speak an eponymous language called Swedish. Christ Almighty, the obfuscation never cease to amaze me.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Because they speak a common language (or rather a bunch of closely related dialects that we call Swedish), Swedes form a linguistic group, by definition. So who is obfuscating?

Charles_Dilkes

No they don’t: they form an ethnic group. Their linguistic group is North Germanic.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

That’s both misleading and wrong. Misleading: it’s about as meaningful as saying that there is no linguistic group “French”, that they are “Romance”, or that there is no linguistic group “Russian”, that they are “Slavic”. I am not talking about language families, I am talking about groups of people that may be grouped together by language. Wrong: “North Germanic” includes Icelandic and Faroese, so even if you’d like to consider linguistic groups as people speaking mutually understandable dialects, “North Germanic” is too big a grouping.

Charles_Dilkes

This is all a red-herring – I’m merely correcting you when you said that the Swedes were a linguistic group; that’s factually false. The Swedes are an ethnic group, not a linguistic one.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Right, facts are a just a red-herring. Ideology doesn’t need facts.

Charles_Dilkes

No your meandering onto distinct & separate topics is a red-herring.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Me meandering? I am simply responding to the meandering of the readers’ comments, including yours. I never claimed that Swedes are NOT an ethnic group, by the way, so what are you objecting to?

Charles_Dilkes

Errr yes you did – that was the whole point of my original response. You said they were technically a ‘linguistic group’. Anyway, that’s the by-the-by – I’m not going to get sucked into such a trivial discussion about absolutely nothing.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Being a linguistic group does not exclude the possibility of also being an ethnic group or part of one, so you indeed started this “trivial discussion about absolutely nothing”. All I did is correct your faulty understanding of the linguistic issues. That’s what I am here for.

Charles_Dilkes

You’re pretty arrogant and you seemingly like to posture; unfortunately there was no ‘misunderstanding of linguistic issues’ because I didn’t proffer an opinion on anything linguistic related.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Yes you did profer an opinion—see your comment above about “North Germanic”.
P.S. any more personally offensive and rude comments and you’ll be blacklisted here in accordane with our comments policy.

Charles_Dilkes

This is very tedious. What about North Germanic? I pointed out correctly, insofar as linguistic groups or language families are concerned, Swedish is North Germanic – that is factually correct. You originally corrected another person by averring that ‘Swede’ is more precisely a linguistic grouping rather than an ethnic one. That is false. There are a distinct people called the Swedes who happen to speak a given language.

The Swedes speak an eponymous language called Swedish; as a singular language it is obviously not a ‘grouping’ in its own right as a point of logic, it is therefore subsumed as part of an overarching family of languages – vis-a-vis: North Germanic. I have said nothing there that is factually incorrect.

Finally – what personally offensive or rude comments have I made? I haven’t passed any comment that would fit that description.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

It is tedious because you don’t read my comments and are more interested in name calling than in learning anything. As I already explained above, a “linguistic group” refers to a group of people, not a group of languages, so “North Germanic” is not a good label for Swedes from that point of view. Simply put, Swedes speak Swedish, not “North Germanic”. Moreover, Swedish is not “obviously not a grouping”. It is a grouping—of dialects, some of which are closer to some so-called “Norwegian dialects” than to other “Swedish dialects”.

As for the issue of linguistic vs. ethnic groups, there is clearly a group of people who speak Swedish (Swedes, linguistic group), and there’s also as clearly a group of people who are Swedish citizens (a group defined by nationality/citizenship). Who does or doesn’t belong to the ETHNIC group called Swedes is far less clear, which is what this whole discussion is all about.

Charles_Dilkes

‘Linguistic group’ isn’t a descriptive of individuals who speak the same language, it’s a description of a group of languages, each of which may be spoken by unique peoples. What it certainly is not is a mere descriptive of individuals who speak the same language; it means what I stated above: a family of related languages via common descent. You’re imputing a meaning to it arbitrarily for the sake of an argument.

I said that Swedish isn’t a grouping as a language, which is factually correct: Swedish is a singular language. Language groups are just that: groups of languages that related via descent. Dialects are not languages in their own right, ergo they don’t, and cannot, constitute a group of languages.

Who does or doesn’t belong as Swedes as an ethnic group may be unclear to you and I as passive observers, but to actual Swedes who are grouped as a distinct ethnicity that is utterly irrelevant. They’re not obliged to satisfy any external criterion. The Swedes are grouped amongst themselves as a point of logic of their existence – if they didn’t then ‘Swedish’ as an ethnic signifier would have no meaning whatsoever.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I am not “imputing [sic] a meaning”, but explaining to you some basic linguistic terminology. Without knowing that, you clearly misunderstood (and continue to misunderstand) my earlier comments. From what you said about Swedish, I infer that you are not a linguist, so I patiently explain to you what these terms mean. You responded by making rude remarks about my character. If you don’t want to learn anything, why do you come to this site at all?

As for Swedish being “a singular language”, most linguists don’t consider it so, as it is not mutually incomprehensible with other Mainland Scandinavian varieties (Danish, Norwegian). The difference between language and dialect is that of degree and of rather arbitrary labels, which the example of Swedish shows only too well. Therefore, from a linguistic point of view, Swedish is a grouping of dialects, Mainland Scandinavian is a language, and North Germanic is a language family (which isn’t the same as a “linguistic group”).

Charles_Dilkes

‘Imputing’ was used correctly so that ‘sic’ is a sic in itself.

Even a cursory search via the internet would reveal that your application of ‘linguistic group’ is erroneous.

Just because it’s not mutually incomprehensible to other Scandinavian languages doesn’t mean it isn’t a distinct or singular language in its own right. Scots isn’t incomprehensible to English speakers, but it’s still a distinct language.

The distinction between dialect and language isn’t arbitrary at all: they’re specific terms. To suggest they’re one and the same is sophistry.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

If you want to know what a word means do you go to a dictionary or a technical glossary (for a technical term) or an internet search? The latter merely reveals how many people don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to matters of language. Sad but true.

As for mutual comprehension, it is a matter of degree, which is why distinguishing language from dialect is a very tricky issue. Far more so than you seem to allow.

Just how much Scots is mutually comprehensible with English is a debatable issue, and whether it is considered a separate language or not depends exactly on whether one takes it to be mutually comprehensible with English or not.

“The distinction between dialect and language isn’t arbitrary at all: they’re specific terms. ” — They are indeed technical terms and I explained to you their technical definitions. If you don’t believe me, take any Introduction to Linguistics (or even my Introduction to Languages of the World), and check out their definitions. But it doesn’t mean that the boundary between the two is clear cut at all.

Charles_Dilkes

Possibly, but then again the internet is merely a collective resource; no offence intended, but you’re using that term uniquely whatever way you put it. But anyway that’s the by-the-by – we’re talking at cross purposes here.

I can accept that some dialects may be so unique that the degree to which they cease to be merely a dialect and instead become a language in their own right might seem opaque; but that isn’t the same as saying that the distinction between dialect & language is blurred: they’re still specific terms with specific attributes. In plain English – as abstractions they’re distinct, but in concrete cases their application would (or better put: could) be blurred. That seems pretty understandable to me.

Well I’m just going to defer to consensus with Scots – it is considered a separate language. I’m simply using that to illustrate a point.

As I say, I can appreciate that the boundaries between dialect & language can be opaque on individual concrete cases, but as abstractions they’re completely distinct – that’s all I’m saying.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I use the terms in the precise sense in which they are used by linguists; if you prefer to defer to the vague collective usage of amateurs, that’s your prerogative.

The issue with Swedish is not about the uniqueness of dialects, but rather with the other side of the coin: the non-distinctiveness of languages. Therefore, although the “collective resource” (internet) will probably label Swedish a language, it is not really a language, according to the linguistic definition. You’ll see that most linguists consider Swedish merely a dialect of Mainland Scandinavian.

The issue is, however, orthogonal to whether Swedes are a linguistic group. Linguistic groups are not mutually exclusive: e.g. speakers of American English form a linguistic group (i.e. a collective of individuals defined by the way they speak) but they will also be members of the “English” linguistic group.

Whether ethnic groups (defined by some other parameter than language) are likewise mutually non-exclusive is an excellent question. Can one be a Swede, a Scandinavian, a European at the same time? Surprisingly, nobody here addressed that.

Charles_Dilkes

I don’t think your last question is all that illuminating – European & Scandinavian has no specific ethnic dimension to it, so a Swede is as much Swedish as they are European etc. in the same manner as an Englishman & Scotsman – distinct ethnicities – are both British.

SirBedevere

I do not know of any scientific consensus on what a “white racial origin” might be, so I will have to leave the nineteenth-century racial science in other hands. Unfortunately, I am not following the semi-syllogistic reasoning of your A and B, so one again, is Marcus Samuelsson a Swede? His genetic material came from East Africa most recently (perhaps since the evolution of man), but his mother tongue was Swedish and he grew up there in a terribly traditional household. Would you call Pushkin a Russian, Sarkozy a Frenchman, Petofi a Hungarian, Disraeli an Englishmen? If those rampant nationalists don’t count as members of their nations, nobody should.

As for “liberal,” I am not probably the best target for your scare-words. While I do not see the relevance to this question, I am an Anglo-Catholic monarchist, so I doubt your liberal conspiracy would have me.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Well-said, James! Speaking of Pushkin, did you manage to watch “Bakenbardy”?

SirBedevere

I got only about 20 minutes in before falling to sleep that night. So far, I’m only understanding shouted slogans and such, but I think I’m following. Russian understanding of Western popular culture in the early 1990s was just adorable.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“Russian understanding of Western popular culture”? Remind me! It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film.

SirBedevere

I may be wrong. I thought those huligani at the beginning of the film were supposed to be adherents of decadent, Western, rock ‘n roll culture.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Maybe, I’d have to rewatch the film. But what these folks considered decadent Western rock ‘n roll culture is quite different from what that culture really was, no doubt.

SirBedevere

That’s the adorable part. It was more like some sort of Italian situationist performance art of the ’60s than anything going on at the time.

Charles_Dilkes

‘Swedish’ is as rooted an ethnic identity as any other; just because you flippantly define it through something transitory and material like ‘pornography’ or ‘brown bread’ doesn’t mean anyone else would. ‘Swedish’, as an ethnic identity, is something constant whether you like it or not. Ethnicities are more than material culture or ideologies.

Ethnic identities tend to be a product of ethnogenesis, and as such are deeply rooted in history – anything that is historical is by definition exclusive. Your attempt at race-baiting is pretty typical of how peruile the left wing tends to be on this subject. Historicity defines who the Swedes are – the fact that someone so different, like an African, is distinguished as something apart, is a testimony to the reality of the Swedes as a unique people.

SirBedevere

It is as rooted as any other, which is to say it is a situational construct, one component is identification with a myth of the past. In the actual past, features that you now find trivial, such as diet and literature, were considered essential aspects of one’s gens. Why is it more trivial to define ethnicity by diet, language, or taste, as a medieval person was more likely to, rather than by the curliness of one’s hair or the shape of one’s nose? Those seem a great deal more trivial to me, precisely because of my innate conservatism.

As to ethnogenesis, it is the sort of event modernists love to put into a distant and misty past. Medievalists and ancient historians, who are quite familiar with the periods in which those events are usually put, find little evidence of the sorts of transitions you describe. This is not to say that the men of the Middle Ages did not have a sense of what we might call ethnicity (gens and natio are typical terms in Latin, though there are others), but they tended to define them not only completely differently from the way we do (by indicia you would find trivial, usually), but also maintained multiple ethnic identities. Indeed, the ethnic identities of men in the Middle Ages were messy and complicated, far more like contemporary people than like the nationalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What do you mean by historicity? Do you mean the events that one has actually experienced, or are you referring to some sort of mythical race memory? My ancestors fought in the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses, but I did not no that until doing my own research, so clearly those things did not shape me. Historicity might make the African in some way different from the Swede, but then does it make the Greek different from the Swede? What about the Swiss? Does it make the Finn different from the Swede? If so, doesn’t it make the Dalecarlian different from the Scanian?

As far as baiting goes, I would point out that this left-wing right-wing nonsense makes very little sense, especially with talking about nationalists like you. The far left has often adopted very similar concepts of nation as the far right, as a perusal of Stalin’s “Marxism and the Nationality Question” would demonstrate. I would try to say where I fit in the ridiculous European left/right spectrum, but I’m afraid that was built for nationalists and socialists, so it has no room for me.

Charles_Dilkes

Whether it’s a ‘situational’ construct (your definition) or an historical one is an utter irrelevance and pure semantics – by either arbitrary definition ethnicities are still a reality.

I didn’t say it was trivial, I said it was irrelevant; culture isn’t the same as ethnicity, ergo material culture isn’t a signifier, or an exclusive signifier, of ethnicity. It’s you who’s reeling of a list of concrete concepts as definitive attributes of ethnicities; I have no reason to accept that arbitrary definition, something that has never been the mainstay of what constitutes ‘ethnicity’.

As for ethnogenesis – you’re setting up a strawman: I never said the medievals had any concept of ethnicity or identity transcending a overarching ‘Christian’ worldview, what I pointed out, correctly, is that there emerged, gradually, nascent identities that would eventually give rise to modern European ethnic groups. That process is rooted in the past and is characterised as ethnogenesis. This isn’t a tendentious point.

Historicity means merely something that is historical – rooted in history.

Who says I’m a nationalist? That’s your presumption, and it’s a capricious one at that. I’ve said nothing that would be conducive to that conclusion.

Charles_Dilkes

Whether it’s a ‘situational’ construct (your definition) or an historical one is an utter irrelevance and pure semantics – by either arbitrary definition ethnicities are still a reality.

I didn’t say it was trivial, I said it was irrelevant; culture isn’t the same as ethnicity, ergo material culture isn’t a signifier, or an exclusive signifier, of ethnicity. It’s you who’s reeling of a list of concrete concepts as definitive attributes of ethnicities; I have no reason to accept that arbitrary definition, something that has never been the mainstay of what constitutes ‘ethnicity’.

As for ethnogenesis – you’re setting up a strawman: I never said the medievals had any concept of ethnicity or identity transcending a overarching ‘Christian’ worldview, what I pointed out, correctly, is that there emerged, gradually, nascent identities that would eventually give rise to modern European ethnic groups. That process is rooted in the past and is characterised as ethnogenesis. This isn’t a tendentious point.

Historicity means merely something that is historical – rooted in history.

Who says I’m a nationalist? That’s your presumption, and it’s a capricious one at that. I’ve said nothing that would be conducive to that conclusion.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Thanks for showing your hand! The Forbes piece has later been proven to be wrong, so you are misinformed. The YouTube link doesn’t work, so I don’t know what you had in mind there. None of this shows that Jews treat (or have treated) Europeans with the sort of hatred you spout. Or that the “aim of Jewish banksters [sic]” is “to implode one’s own nation’s economy so
they can do a hostile takeover to take control of said country’s assets”. So thanks for BS. Please post no more hateful comments here, they will be erased.

RonHess

The evidence was provided in two links.

It’s nothing new that anti-white, pro white genocide sites delete any comments that might go against the agenda to destroy our people. It is YOU who peddle hatred against peoples of European descent and their rights to free self-determination in their own lands. The very usage of the word “Xenophobic” is HATE, because it unduly implies hatred on the part of others. To such people, only white people can HATE, yet certain Jews who work feverishly to purposely deconstruct our society, and have been doing so for 100 years, get a free pass. Does this imply that you think these Jews have a right to genocide us because they are special and we are evil? Don’t bother to answer.

sammy

They are slow they should already be rounding up the jews who are always the problem…we all know how evil they are.

Mainlander

Hateful? You’re ridiculous and dangerous.

guest003

because they are the ones rotten with greed, by destroying nations they can thrive on slavery which is now becoming a reality.

guest003

phobia is irrational fear, there is no doubt that in case of immigrants fears are based on reason after so many attacks , murders, rapes, hate speech against host nations etc. Another thing, xenophobia is distinguishing between “us” and “them” , this is a basic form of people forming groups and countries, people with similar values and culture. It is a priceless human heritage.

http://geocurrents.info Martin W. Lewis

Note to readers. GeoCurrents does not usually run guest posts, but we made an an exception in this case. James Mayfield was a teaching assistant in the spring for my class on global human geography, and he quickly impressed me with the depth of his knowledge andhis commitment to understanding ethnic issues worldwide. As he also makes his own maps, we figured that his article on on right-wing parties in Europe would make a nice addition to the post. We knew that it would be controversial, but we do not shy away from controversy, even if we try to be political neutral in most matters.

Andrew Davies

I find his understanding of ethnic issues quite flawed, because it is a sad reality in academia today that if one steps outside the bounds of allowed discussion, one loses one’s position, and is blackballed throughout academia itself. Kevin MacDonald has been one of he few brave enough to explore ethnic conflict without bowing to the agenda which is the deconstruction of European cultures and ethnicities, and he was saved only by being tenured. I notice a lot of charged words here which also betray a lack of neutrality. Describing the topic as “xenophobia” is inherently perjorative, as is censoring people who do not agree with you by classifying what they say as “hate speech.”

Ethnic issues are not hard to understand when one approaches them honestly. The evidence is clear that different groups have more or less different ways of viewing the world. European ethnicities have their own differences, some of which are even evident in language itself, but for many centuries, a common Christian belief system allowed agreements to be met and understood. Islam is outside this tradition of understanding, and those who espouse it are also of very different ethnicities than Europeans. It should not be difficult for anyone to understand that if the French and Germans or the French and English or the South Slavs and Hungarians have conflicts over their ways of viewing the world, that groups far more alien will simply make a peaceable society unworkable.

The only societies that truly work are homogeneous ones. Look at all the indexes of happiness, health, education, and you will consistently see the same players at the top. Those have been Japan, Finland, Iceland, and the other Scandinavian countries. Why these countries in particular? Japan and Scandinavia are dissimilar in most ways, except that they are homogeneous (this is being destroyed in Scandinavia however.) What does ethnic homogeneity offer? I will actually define this, while proponents of “diversity” can only offer quasi-religious reasoning that it is a “good thing” and to oppose it is “hate speech,” and you will be denied employment or possibly imprisoned if you do so.

When a nation state is truly a nation, that is, made up of a homogeneous population, the members of society have a similar understanding of right and wrong and interact accordingly. If someone acts in a criminal way, he is ostracized or imprisoned, and no one can think this unjust. In a multicultural society (and a perfect example is the current Zimmerman case in the U.S.) One group can perpetually believe that injustice is being done to them, even when it is not, according to those who set up the system. This may come from a difference in the understanding of right and wrong, it may come from purposeful agitation from within in an effort to divide and conquer the population, but it invariably happens, and thus there is invariably tyranny in multicultural societies. Different ethnicities cannot live together in the same nation state without conflict. If they are forced to do so, and do eventually integrate to some degree, a lowest common denominator society emerges, at a lower level of culture than either component society initially possessed, because eventually the only areas of agreement can be the basest of human impulses… greed, violence, lust… is it evident yet that I am describing American culture on many levels?

Why do the “elites” want to destroy homogeneous cultures? Well, the answer is obvious… a house divided against itself cannot stand. And a state that is composed of differing ethnicities spends most of its time mitigating these differences instead of solving real problems, and one of those real problems is the elite themselves. One of the homogeneous nations I mentioned recently did something the USA could not… it stood up to the banksters and refused to sign on to their debt and enslave the nation in so doing. I am talking about tiny Iceland of course. This is a population that sticks together like glue, because it is one of the most homogeneous in the world. They were able to defeat the nefarious plans of the globalists because they were united in understanding and not rent by internal strife. In America, the masses, who have lost most connection with each other through multiculturalism and the rootlessness brought about by corporations constantly expecting people to move, sat around watching lowbrow television and playing games while their senators and representatives sold out to the Rothschilds and signed us all onto their debt. Congress has so little in common with other Americans, as most Americans do with each other, that it was easy to betray them. Multiculturalism works to divide nations so the globalists can break them and virtually own them. This is why they use their vast wealth to promote cultural marxism and critical race theory and every other mechanism to destroy the happy families that are homogeneous nations. Divide and conquer… an old tale with a new spin.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“for many centuries, a common Christian belief system allowed agreements to be met and understood” — but it didn’t prevent the centuries of bloodshed in Europe. From the Hundred Year’s War to the Thirty Year’s War and beyond. And let’s not forget that both World War I and World War II started in Europe because very pieceful European nations really got along.

“the basest of human impulses… greed, violence, lust… is it evident yet that I am describing American culture on many levels?” — not really, sounds like an Italian opera to me, or a German fairy tale, or a French film…

“Look at all the indexes of happiness, health, education, and you will
consistently see the same players at the top. Those have been Japan,
Finland, Iceland, and the other Scandinavian countries.”– Look at the map of this index of happiness, Japan is not particularly happy, eh?http://geocurrents.info/geonotes/the-satisfaction-with-life-index

“censoring people who do not agree with you by classifying what they say as “hate speech” — There’s plenty of disagreement on this site, but “hate speech” is as different from a disagreement as murder is from poking someone with an elbow. Not understanding what “hate speech” is and what it can (and has) led to only speaks of one’s lack of moral standards.

Eskarpas

Not to get into political discussion as there are things I agree with and I disagree, I will note just a few things:
While terms such as “hate speech”, “far right”, “fascism” (and others, e.g. “islamism”) surely have their dictionary-defined meanings, the problem is that they are frequently used for things that fall far outside these meanings (for political reasons of raising animosity against some groups), including by academia.
This system of inciting dislike against certain people is nothing new. It consists of three steps:
1.Find some Group A which is viewed negatively by the society (e.g. “Nazis” (for their mass murdering), “Frauds”, “Terrorists”).
2.Associate that Group A with Group B to which the target people belongs to. The association must have some grounds, but the grounds may be minor: e.g. some superficial similarity or some minor correlation between membership of both groups (which could be overemphasised in propaganda, owned media, etc.). It is then possible to claim that the correlation is in reality much larger, e.g. “Most/all members of Group B are also members of Group A”.
3.The dislike of Group B itself will rise, so will fall the credibility of its members. However, if you’d look objectively, most members of Group B are not members of Group A. Despite of this the animosity towards Group A (which may on itself be justified) could be transfered to Group B by such means.
There are/were many examples of such promotion of dislike (Terrorists=Muslims, Conspiracists=Freemasons, Paedophiles=Priests and I could continue long); linking certain political groups of Europe (Group B) to “xenophobics” (Group A) is unfortunately also similar.
The true answers on whether groups are related typically lie in statistics (if these are correctly chosen) rather than emotional overplayings and downplayings of particular facts; that’s why many Geocurrents articles are so useful compared to traditional media (I am not talking about this article in particular however).
Oxford dictionary describes the word Xenophobia as “intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries”. Far from every anti-immigration argument is xenophobic in nature – in fact, most aren’t. Just a few examples:
1.A belief that because homogenous societies are statistically more stable, the quality of life is therefore better in them.
2.A belief that modern economical migration creates caste system in essence whereby locals are provided high benefits and refuse to take “bad yet necessary jobs” which are then left to immigrants.
3.A belief that modern economical migration perpetuates the global inequality by “draining brains” of undeveloped countries, or by transferring the aging population problem elsewhere (more and more sources of emigrants themselves have low birth rates, as was noted in Geocurrents as well).
4.A belief that there are no “better” and “worse” cultures, that every culture is in a sense beautiful and has a right to perpetuate itself without assimilation risk. I.e. the global cultural diversity does not require cultural diversity in every single country or city (rather vice-versa).
I am not saying my own opinion now as this is not the point, but each of these may have many arguments “for”; unfortunately 1 and 4 would be called (absolutely reasonlessly) xenophobic by some, 2 and 3 are perhaps “less controversial” by the same people as they are leftist in nature.

SirBedevere

I’m not quite sure which centuries your are talking about, in which Christianity allowed agreements to be “met and understood” in a way that they could not be between Christian and Muslim powers. The medieval millennium is, as Asya pointed out, a period in which there were easily as many broken agreements as any other. The very pinnacles of Christendom, Pope and Emperor, repeatedly broke their compacts with each other and with their allies over the course of the High Middle Ages. At the same time, treaties between the Byzantines, Crusader states and various Muslim monarchs, were honored as much as those between European rulers (which is to say, quite often not). Indeed, the rivalry between the French crown and the Empire allowed an alliance between Ottomans and French that was easily as stable as any French alliance with any power.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Thanks for your thoughtful comment, James!

Freidenkerin

If “human rights groups” are so concerned about what goes on in Austria, please research the Verbotsgesetz. There are currently Austrians sitting in investigative custody, 23 hours/day in tiny cells over non-violent speech crimes, for over 2 years, with the possibility to rot in prison for a total of 20! It’s inhuman to say the least, and it only extends to so-called rightwing activity, denial of communist crimes and discourtesy towards their victims is permitted. Under such circumstances it’s hardly surprising people are starting to have enough of exaggerated political correctness policing!

TimUpham

When the Central Bank of Austria collapsed, after that it was annexed by Nazi Germany.

SirBedevere

This is precisely the sort of thing in Austria, Belgium, and even Italy and Germany that I was saying causes some in those countries to see far right parties (and in some cases far left parties) as the only real votes against the status quo.

boris denisov

racially “authentic” Greek public — intereting to have a look

TimUpham

It happened in the 1930’s, when European countries were dealing with record inflation, high unemployment, and bank collapse. So they reached out to ultra-nationalistic, extremist parties. They are doing it again. I have people in Croatia, who are telling me how great the Utase are. But nothing about how many people the Utase killed, or about Tito taking wounded Utase soldiers out of the hospital, to be executed. Really great times!

MP

Being Romanian, I know the Romanian realities a bit better and I find some comments about this country a bit unfortunate.

“while the aptly named “Attack!” party of Bulgaria (~10%) is vociferously anti-Ziganist, anti-Romanian, and anti-Turkish. “

You must certainly meant anti-Roma, not anti-Romanian.

“Although Romanian culture is often described as deeply xenophobic and often viciously racist (particularly against Roma and Jews, and even Hungarian to some extent)”

The first part of this is sentence is too much. What is Romanian culture for you? I mean, of course there are xenophobes and racists in Romania, but to say that xenophobia and racism are main attributes of Romanian culture is frankly wrong and insulting. I meet/read/hear about much more Romanians struck by xenophilia than xenophobia.

“the Romanian parliament is almost completely social democratic and socialist.” This part is misleading. The social-liberal coalition in power (a socialist party + a liberal conservative one) have about 58% of the seats. Besides this, the socialist or social democratic names of the party in Romania don’t mean almost anything. If anything, almost all parties in Romania are socially conservative.

Darthkuriboh

Xenophobia and racism: buzzwords for people who believe native Europeans have a right to exist and a right to our own homelands that our ancestors fought for, built, died for, and made for us.

Realist T

Why is it that only Europe is subject to such scrutiny? I would like to see a map explaining the current “xenophobic” regimes of the Far East, Middle East including Israel, and Africa. These places all seem “racist” because they are overwhelmingly only one ethnicity per country and do their best to keep it that way.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

One cannot discuss everything at once in a reasonably short post. We might come back to these other topics later. I do take exception, however, to your characterization of Israel as a racist state, as it has Arab, Druze and other minorities, as well as racially/genetically (?) different groups of Jews, all of which have the same rights and responsibilities.

Realist T

Why do you take exception? Israel is declared as a Jewish state and protects its Jewish character. Jewish girls and Arab men are discouraged from relations and Christian priests are regularly spat upon while walking in the streets. The list goes on, of course.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

As I mentioned above, Israel is a de facto multi-ethnic/racial state. Some individuals may discourage Jews and Arabs from intermarriage but there is no law against it. As for spitting on Christian priests, some cooky individuals may do so (though I’ve never witnessed it or heard of it), but again it’s not sanctioned by the state. Anyone spitting on a Christian priest would be subject to the same laws as someone spitting on a Muslim or a Jew or whoever. Need I mention that Israel (=the state) preserves Christian holy sites, which can’t be said of many Muslim countries? So the list goes on in your head only.

Realist T

So I guess it’s alright if Israelis do such as long as their government doesn’t endorse it?

It’s not alright, but neither is harassing women on the beach. If Mulim immigrant men in Sweden rape local women (sadly, not an uncommon occurence) and the state punishes them according to the law, does it make Sweden a sexist state (because men who live there mistreat women) or a racist state (because it punishes the offenders)? The same ultra-orthodox Jews that allegedly spit on Christian priests also spit at other Jews, including those ultra-orthodox they don’t consider ultra-orthodox enough. This sort of behavior reflects badly on the individuals and on the specific (religious/ethnic/whatever) groups which condone and perhaps even promote such behavior, not the state that condemns is (and which the ultra-orthodox in question hate no less than you do, by the way).

Dalek_1963

“If Muslim immigrant men in Sweden rape local women (sadly, not an uncommon occurrence) “

Glad to hear your supportive of Swedish women. What would be even more supportive would be to back a ban on any further muslim immigration and a humane policy to send home the rest.

Nicéphore Jünge

Yeah, right, thanks a lot for only letting ‘Palestinian militants’ occupy, piss, and shit in the Nativity Church for a couple of weeks a few years ago… And for dropping like a shoe your Christian allies in Southern Lebanon… And for making enemies of all those in the Orient who have protected Christians (thinking of Saddam & the Assads; while allying with the worst Islamist world-peddling filth : the Saudis)…

Previously the Jews were simultaneously blamed for being left-wing Marxists, aiming to destroy the European society as well as for being right-wing greedy “banksters”, aiming to destroy the European society. It is amusing how little has changed…

identity crisis, so they do not think their respective cultures must be preserved by banishing burqas. Hopefully, European culture is strong enough not to be defined only as one opposite to the cultures

introduced by various immigrants. Let’s insist on our right to preserve our traditions, let’s not be afraid someone could find them offensive, and let’s not prevent others from maintaining their traditions, (provided it’s legal).

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Well-said, Vitaliy!

Dalek_1963

Jews were simultaneously blamed for being left-wing
Marxists, aiming to destroy the European society as well as for being
right-wing greedy “banksters”, aiming to destroy the European society.
It is amusing how little has changed.

So, its only one or the other? Which one? Or will you have the breathtaking chutzpah to tell me its neither?

I must say though, its gallant of you to sign up to Disqus merely to back up the Mrs.

Nicéphore Jünge

Jews tend to want capital accumulation for themselves and equal poverty for the rest… Just saying. :p

Ygor Coelho Soares

If some of you guys are so worried about native Europeans “having a right to exist” why don’t you actually fight for HIGHER indigenous population growth instead of merely complaining about all those immigrants “invading my beloved country”? I mean, if immigration has such a supposed deep impact in the future composition of the European populations, it’ll be mostly due to low and in some cases extremely low fertility levels of the native populations. Period.

In very few European countries does immigration account for more than 0.3% or 0.4% annual population growth. If the European native population grew at the USA pace (0.6%) or, if they think the matter is so urgent, at the Mexico pace (1.3%), every European country would retain their White national majority at least for the following decades. So, if Europeans and especially those extremely “baby-phobe” (just kidding) Eastern European countries (Ukraine, Bulgaria, Hungary and others) want to preserve their genes and guarantee the preservation of their “racial” and ethnic makeup, there are only two safe and proof-tested effective ways: stop complaining and make more babies and, just to guarantee that even those “new Europeans” (that’s what they’ll inevitably be from now on, it’s useless to complain) will follow the cultural heritage of the country, a real policy and cultural behavior to ease real and perpetual assimilation of the sons and daughters of immigrants.

You shouldn’t intend to fight against practices that have ALWAYS been done since humankind exists and are now made even easier and inevitably more intense by modern transport and culture: immigration and racial mixing. All those complaints “oh, they’re brown/black, they’re not real Europeans, call the police!” will in the end be useless. They’ll keep coming in bigger or lower numbers, but it’s a trend that won’t go away. If Europeans are to be White and preserve their genetic makeup (I don’t think it should be THE aim of Europeans for their future, but many seem to be worried), Nature offers only two good solutions: faster reproduction rate AND, in the case of skin color, very intensive mixing of the White majority with the Black and especially the Brown-skinned minority, so that, as a few countries have already shown the world, even the minority in 5 ou 6 generations will look White or at most lighter Brown. So, basically, the profound teaching to “racial-aware” Europeans should be: complain less and have more sex. lol

Dalek_1963

“So, basically, the profound teaching to “racial-aware” Europeans should be: complain less and have more sex. lol”

The problem being that we have to do that entirely unofficially. Anyone publicly calling for such a thing would be vilified as a racist in most (all?) white countries.

Any official public policy to boost the birth rate would be immediately compromised through its uptake by the most welfare prone groups ie the immigrants we are supposed to outbreed. And of course it would be attacked as racist from the get go.

For most white people merely halting the flow of immigrants would boost pay, reduce housing costs, reduce taxes etc all factors which would increase birth rate. Yet I presume you would say we are not allowed to do those.

Nicéphore Jünge

Having sex is not the issue. Europeans have plenty of sex. But contraception and abortion negate its procreative function.

“Any official public policy to boost the birth rate would be immediately
compromised through its uptake by the most welfare prone groups ie the
immigrants we are supposed to outbreed. And of course it would be
attacked as racist from the get go.”

I have thought of a solution to that : transforming the income-tax into a tax-supporting-natality; you would have a very high basic income-tax that would be radically reduced with every kid you have and raise (adoptions not counted, except for infertile couples), e.g. that goes down by a quarter for every additional kid. Since in generally only about the richest half of the population of First World countries pay the income-tax, and since those that do tend to be ethnically autochtonous, that would be massive incentive for an increase in autochtonous natality.

Also there is a leftist way to frame any kind of supporting rich people having many kids and poor people having less kids, that can counteract the accusation of racism : rich people having many kids means a great division of wealth in the inheritence process, and poor people having few kids allows them to better care for them and augment their likelyhood of becoming successful, wealthy, etc., rather than in the gutter or in jail.

^^

Nicéphore Jünge

Whites are going extinct in the US too, actually, as they are among all First World peoples. It is because we have not drastically reconfigured political dispositions to take into account current modern facts. Before, the more kids you had, the richer you tend to become (because they could work the field, gain power and prestige in the church, become warriors and protect your territory as well conquer more, all that good stuff) and to have many kids you had to be rich and powerful already (otherwise you could not feed or care for them, obviously). Today, it is very costly for the rich and middle-class to have kids, and very cheap for the poor to have some. And it generally does not generate wealth or power for the rich or middle-class parent at all, or if it does, only little and late in life. Furthermore, if you don’t have children and are rich or middle-class, you don’t have to pay for raising any and you still get benefits insured by the works of the kids of others (through ‘redistribution’ retirement systems, for instance). On top of that, culturally, individualistic hedonism as well as egalitarianism tends to devalue procreation in that having kids prevents from having fun, damages the woman’s looks, and also women work, and having kids can be a problem with their careers and what not, etc.

So basically, radical reforms are our only hope, and especially the destruction of the ‘Welfare State’ along with a thorough intellectual reeducation of sorts. It’s not that easy to do. Much harder than poor people from the Third World who just get in, don’t change their custums much, have a bunch of kids that autoctonous people pay for, and conquer the countries without ever having to fight…

Ygor Coelho Soares

You have some interesting points. Thanks.

Nicéphore Jünge

You bet.

Realist T

Hmm, interesting question about the Jews in Germany and Spain 1000 years ago. They must have migrated there from Middle East, yes? If that’s the case they have deep roots indeed. But if there were Europeans already there the Europeans would have deeper roots. And since they couldn’t find a way to live peacefully among those populations they should probably have found a different place to live for their own safety. But I don’t believe Jews had absolutely nothing to do with their own persecution.

I didn’t say Israel subverts other nations. I said Jews subvert other nations. I consider you to be a subversive agent if you teach white gentiles in USA that race and ethnicity don’t matter, we are all equal, blacks and whites should have relations, etc. It’s highly hypocritical of you and destructive, you as a Jew and a supporter of a Jewish Israel.

Well, alright then. I expected you to close the discussion off a long time ago. You don’t like to address the meat of the issue like another user said.

Jose

As it was to be expected, this post attracted the usual share of “Europreservationists”, who incidentally are the same people who celebrate the establishment of European settler colonies in places like Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa and the Americas. Nothing new to see.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Oh yes and the same people who don’t think other people have the same rights as they do (even when they don’t encroach on their precious “ethnic and territorial integrity”!

Muhammad

Hey Jose, you forgot to mention another European settler colony that’s regularly celebrated…

It’s called Israel.

Thord Olavsson

Good point Muhammad.

@ Jose: Many Europreservationists, or simply pro-Europeans as I would call us, agree that the colonization of the “New World” was unfortunate seen from the perspective of the indigenous peoples who already lived there. But that is history now, nothing can be done about it, and the fact that it was a tragedy for, let’s say, the Amerindians that Europeans became the dominant majority group on the continent, doesn’t mean that those white Americans who are descended from such settlers can’t be proud of the positive legacy of their ancestors, such as pretty much constructing successful societies from scratch. If you, Jose, and the rest of the apologists for massive immigration to Europe, think that it was unfortunate for the Amerindians that they became a minority in America, why would you support the same thing happening to Europeans in Europe? Do you think that native Europeans living today are collectively guilty for something that happened some hundreds of years ago? If that is the case, are Jews living today collectively guilty for the genocides carried out by Jews on their enemies described in the Old Testament? Are Danes and Germans living today responsible for the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Celtic England? Are members of modern Amerindian tribe A collectively guilty for a massacre carried out by their ancestors on Amerindian tribe B some hundred years ago?

Or does all of this historic collective guilt ONLY apply to native Europeans?

Jose

Here i’m pointing to a common double standard typical among people who suscribe to your views, not placing any value judgement on the particular issue of the stablishment of European settler colonies. Your argumentats regarding historical guilt don’t really concern me.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

See, the ethnic preservationists have argued so eloquently in their comments that Jews are not from Europe (and so shouldn’t undermine their ethnic integrity etc.)… including the guy who gave the thumbs up to your comment. So are Jews from Europe or not? One can’t have it both ways! But then, the xenophobic views/position are never rational or logical… QED.

Muhammad

I do not share the views of the other posters. The modern day Jewish people are by and large European. Did you find my comment xenophobic? May I ask why you thumbed down my comment?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Because I take exception to your characterization of Israel as a “European settler colony”.

Muhammad

Oh but you don’t take exception to Jose’s characterization of New Zealand, Australia, the Americas and South Africa as a “European settler colony”, no?

QED.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

No, I don’t. Because those Europeans settlers in America, New Zealand, Australia etc. did not have roots in those regions. That’s the difference.

Muhammad

Roots? But wait, all our roots are African, didn’t you say so? No land belongs to anyone by birthright, am I correct? Since when did a nation have copyright ownership of any land for that matter? There are no constants, or does a law of constant suddenly apply to the Jewish people but nobody else? And are you suggesting the populations of the new world haven’t absorbed the preexisting populations, prompting you to claim that they have no connections to the continents they now inhabit?

The majority of Jewish people today have no genealogical claims over ancient Judea, that’s a fact. Furthermore, even ancient Judea’s inhabitants had no roots in the land they seized from the Canaanites and other tribes.

See how you’re beginning to contradict yourself?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Not at all. I didn’t say that all peoples/ethnic groups were formed in Africa. That would be a silly claim. All people can trace descent from Africa, but that is irrelevant to both ethnic identity and geopolitics. Unfortunately, you ascribe to me claims I didn’t make. I am not saying that Native Amerians have no connection to the continent or that white, Asian or Afro-Americans who live there now do not. But it doesn’t change the fact that United States as such started as a European settler colony. Those early settlers came to new land that they had no prior connection to. I am not sure why you call something that’s a lie “a fact”. As for Canaanites, who do you take to be their direct descendants? Not yourself, I hope?

Thord Olavsson

I remember that you wrote earlier in the debate, to one of the other nationalists of European heritage, that we are all from Africa so the fact that Europeans have deep ethnic roots in Europe doesn’t matter. Have you changed your mind? Is ethnic identity and roots suddenly significant for geopolitics after all? Perhaps only for some peoples, especially if they are “Chosen”? Or do you suddenly acknowledge that native Europeans have a greater right to Europe than anyone else? If not, why did it suddenly matter that Jews have ancient roots in the middle east (a fact that I will admit)?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

“that we are all from Africa so the fact that Europeans have deep ethnic roots in Europe doesn’t matter”—you misunderstood me. The point that I was trying to make there (and which you presumably missed) is that there’s no one particularly good time frame to which we can go to know who’s from where. If we go far back into the past, every individual can trace their roots to Africa, but it is as irrelevant to the establishment of geopolitical entities or ethnic identities as 100 years ago or a 1000 years ago. Jews were living in the Middle East (Levant, to be more precise) at a time before Swedes were an ethnic entity. But how far back into the past any group can trace ITS history does not affect the validity of any other group.

Nicéphore Jünge

“Jews were living in the Middle East (Levant, to be more precise) at a time before Swedes were an ethnic entity.”

Actually, the first time Ioudaioi (in Greek, because this is the language people spoke then most, it was Hellenistic times) took an ethno-culturo-political meaning (as opposed to “legendary descendant of the tribe of Judah, one of the sons of the fictional Jacob”, or “a Judean, subject of the Southern of the two kingdoms where Biblical ideology is important, and which is called Judah”…) was likely, as it happens, under the Hasmoneans after 100 BC, and furthermore nothing close to what we call currently Judaism existed before the 70 AD Roman destruction of the so-called ‘Second Temple’ and the following re-invention of the ideology (which might have happenned at a council in Yavné some years later, or perhaps only happened throughout a century and a half of elaboration which produced the Mishnah around 200 AD; while the first written mention of a people called the Suiones (an Latin rendition of an ethnonym for the Swedes) dates to Tacitus’ Gemania in 98 AD. So I would qualify that statement of yours as dubious.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Since your grasp of historical facts, as evidenced from this comment (and your other comments on this site), is shoddy, anything you say is dubious.

Nicéphore Jünge

Impressive comeback. Thanks for saving me from the darkness of ignorance and error by providing me such light, such truth.

Nicéphore Jünge

The dominant current theory is the Out of Africa one, but it might change. A lot of stuff is yet to be discovered, and some revisions are being made every day. For instance we now know that all non-Africans have on average 2% of genetic material inherited from the Neanderthal, whereas a few years ago we thought there was none at all.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

And how does the possibility of admixture from the Neanderthal disprove the Out-Of-Africa theory?

Nicéphore Jünge

I’m just pointing out that what we thought we knew is being renewed, sometimes discarded, as the doxa evolves. The Out-of-Africa theory itself has radically changed; it used to consist of one single exit of homo sapiens sapiens some 70 000 years or so ago, I forget, and now it seems that there were at least to, hundreds of thousands of years apart from each other, if my memory serves correct. Pretty big change. And aren’t they finding very old skeletal humanoid remains in Asia, these days? Polygenism might yet make some kind of comeback, just like phrenology was completely discredited, and then we realized that, in its crude fashion and along with its erroneous interpretations and extrapolations, it did foreshadow accurately the compartmentalization of functions in different coordinated modules in the brain. Same thing for “penal anthropology”, the idea that physical determinations (then as basic as looking like a caveman, lol) corresponded to proneness to commit crime; well, now we know that it wasn’t all bull in that in most cases sociopaths can be identified as infants, agressivity is (quite logically) related to levels of testosterone and other male hormones (which’s averages vary from one individual to the next, and is highly hereditary) and on and on.

Nicéphore Jünge

“Since when did a nation have copyright ownership of any land for that matter”

Ever heard of either the right of conquest, or the notion of fait accompli, or the constitutions of civic orders, or the force of (in this case international) law…?

Nicéphore Jünge

And it’s a bullsh** Biblical myth that Jews conquered Canaan. Jews emerged as a fanatical dissident religious movement from among the Canaanites, and only later pretended to be of different origins to better consolidate their identity, solidarity, cohesiveness. There was no exodus. Egypt dominated Canaan most of that period anyway. And the only significant long-term atypical movement between the two back then was when Semites, the Hyksos, invaded, conquered and submitted Egypt for a while, until they were booted out.

Thord Olavsson

Hey, do you now claim that all people on the planet do NOT have an equal right to live wherever they wish? Do you say that some people can claim a territory by birthright? Does that also apply to native Europeans?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I didn’t say that, you again put your own midset into my mouth. I think people can live wherever they want as long as they can go there according to the laws of that country (unless they want to live where they already live, of course). But this is exactly what YOU do not want, isn’t it? You don’t want anyone to immigrate to YOUR country?

Dalek_1963

So much for having roots in a region then!

Nicéphore Jünge

I wouldn’t mind people of Europeans coming back to Europe. Afrikaners should do so, for instance, and fast. Leave that shit hole people call South Africa.

Dalek_1963

Hilarious! One minute anyone can live anywhere, the next minute we are asked to privilege certain people who have roots in a given region. Double think at its finest!

Nicéphore Jünge

Who says anyone can live anywhere? Only those who want a taste of my shotgun can come live in my yard.

Thord Olavsson

Hi Muhammad. Judging by your name, I guess you are a Muslim, possibly descended from one of the Muslim countries (unless you are a European convert or something). When you’re reading the comments of me and other European nationalists on here, what is it that you disagree with? Try to imagine that you are in our shoes, and that the demographics of your country – no, your entire civilization – is changed at a quicker pace than at any time in recorded history, due to extremely irresponsible immigration policies. The societal elites say that your country MUST be transformed into multiculturalism, and that everybody should have an equal right to move there. Those who object to this are publically demonized and branded as “racists”, “Nazis”, “xenophobes” etc, possibly even imprisoned or heavily fined for draconian, Orwellian “hate speech” laws. Is it really that hard to understand our position? How would you have reacted if the same happened to your own ancestral country? What if masses of Christians emigrated to all Muslim countries threatening to change their demographics?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I would love to hear Muhammad’s answer, but I will jump in and answer your last question: they would most likely kill them or drive them away, which is exactly what Muslim countries have repeatedly done to both Christians and Jews (e.g. do some research on Copts in Egypt, Christians in Iraq, Jews in Iran and North Africa).

Thord Olavsson

The reason that I gave Muhammad a thumbs-up was because he mentioned the fact that some of the people who wish to lay collective guilt on the shoulders of Europe because of historic colonization in other parts of the world, often “forget” to criticize other people’s for their own colonization. Countless peoples of all races have colonized the territories of other peoples throughout history, but anti-Europeans conveniently forget about this fact. It is only Europeans that are guilty for the acts of their ancestors, in this ideology. This is the sort of attitude that can not be considered anything less than outright anti-Europeanism, even anti-white racism, since it is part of a historic narrative in which whites or indigenous Europeans are attributed the role of evil villains, the greatest racists of them all, the most genocidal and imperialistic devils who have lost any right to actively defend their existence, and who must crawl before the Jews, the Africans etc. for all eternity begging for forgiveness. This is an evil narrative detached from any objective facts, but it has unfortunately for us (the Europeans) become an established religious dogma in our society and popular culture, enforced by the mass media, by anti-European “anti-racist” organizations (who just happen to sell the in which the white man plays the role as the Great Racist, and are as such more anti-white than anti-anything-else), by Cultural Marxist academics, etc.

I did not agree with Muhammad that Israel was created by “European” colonization, as Jews are, indeed, not Europeans properly speaking. Jews have never been considered to belong in Europe to the same degree as regular Europeans, and even the whitest of Jews do distinguish themselves from most Europeans genetically by having a strong middle-eastern component in their genetics. So the Jews are actually right about one thing, being that they can trace their ancestry back to the middle east. They are not fully middle-eastern any longer because they have picked up some European genetics while staying in Europe for centuries, but the middle-eastern genetic core is still there.

The greatest hypocrisy of all is those Jews who want Israel to be a Jewish nation-state, while they accuse Europeans of “racism” and worse when we speak out against the colonization of our countries by non-European peoples, because Europe allegedly “can not survive without being multicultural”.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I don’t “lay collective guilt on the shoulders of Europe because of historic colonization in other parts of the world”. I think it was a great civilizing force, first of Rome throughout Europe and then of Europe throughout the world. I bet neither you nor Muhammad would agree. And not a very “anti-European leftist Marxist blah-blah-blah” view either, eh?

I don’t know what other people you want to “criticize for their own colonization” (besides the Jews, because they are always at fault for everything, in your worldview, no?!), but I don’t think there’s a general badness about colonization, and each case has to be considered individually. For the same reason, I don’t think that other people coming to Europe today is necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on what they do and how they behave when they come. The same thing applies to people who are being “colonized” (one could say that Jews living in the Rhineland were already a very well-formed ethnic entity centuries “Germanic people” differentiated into Norwegians, Germans, Danes, Swedes, etc., so it is not entirely clear who colonized who, but we won’t get into that).

As for whether Europe can or cannot survive without being multicultural, it already is! If you take Europe as a whole (how much do Norwegians have in common with Ukrainians, for example?), and even if you look at individual countries. By global standards it is very uniform ethnolinguisically but it’s not a 100%, never was and never will be. You’ll just have to get used to it.

Finally, as for your stance on Israel, I said this before and will have to say it again: it is a very multicultural society, whichever way you look at it: language, religion, origin, music, food, even genetics. And despite the many tensions it manages to get along and to go on in a way I wish Europeans started to learn from. Good luck!

Nicéphore Jünge

The difference between European colonization and others’ is that ours cost us much more than it brought us, and benefited greatly the colonized (3/4 of the Third World’s population today wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for modern European medicine, for instance – the population of Egypt went from 2 million in 1800 to around 80 million today…). And people dare blame us about that? We should be the one’s blaming ourselves for having been way to kind and generous with our resources. And how about slavery, do we ever get a thanks for abolishing it the world over? Never. And when we did practice in on inter-racial lines (cause nobody cares about intra-racial practices of slavery for some reason…) i’d like to see how the standard of living of a slave in a plantation in Alabama in 1800 compared to that of one in his native Africa, or even to the standard of living of a free man then in his land… I’m pretty sure 2/3 died before the age of 1 and most the rest died by the age of 30, after having lived in ignorance, suffering, and as the servants of their little local “Big Man” anyhow. So please, enough.

Jose

Not consistently celebrated by these Eurowhatever types, though.

Muhammad

Yeah, well those “Eurowhatever types” also think Turks, Albanians and Azeris aren’t European simply because they’re not christian. Their opinions hardly matter in accepted scholarship. Ashkenazis are Europeans.

Jose

Oh sure, European Jews are pretty much European, yet some among the white pride crowd would rather side with the Pallies. Not all, of course (see Gert Wilders)

Muhammad

And what about the Turks, Azerbaijanis and Albanians? Do you consider them European or not?

Muslims of Europe always receive the worst end of the stick in being identified as Europeans. While some White pride people probably don’t mind accepting Ashkenazis as Europeans, it seems to me they’re all phobic of Europe’s muslim nationalities. The phobia extends to the likes of Asya Pereltsvaig too, who said the most bigoted thing about muslims a few days ago (check her comment in the bottom).

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Please don’t ascribe to me views that I don’t hold. I have no problem considering Albanians as Europeans, in fact what else would they be? Turks, same thing. As for Azerbaijanis, since when has the Trans-Caucasus been part of Europe, geographically speaking?

As for what I said about Muslims, you can consider it bigoted if you’d like, but facts are facts.

Muhammad

Facts are facts? Where are your facts? Back them up.

Back up your accusations.

Your reply was ridiculous and to prove my point, look who thumbed up your comment.

We are outnumbered here by foreigners. I don’t see us going around killing them or driving them out.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

You can google up “copts in Egypt”, see what’s been happening to them lately. Or Circassians and other Christians in Syria. Here’s just one recent news item:

As for the Jews, just look up what happened to Jews in Iran, Yemen. We had an earlier GeoCurrents post on Jews in Djerba (Tunisia). There will be another post on Jews in Iran after we return from the summer vacation.

I said nothing about you personally or the country you live in, but you said yourself that you are no longer a Muslim…

Muhammad

My rejection of Islam has nothing to do with this.

You accused Muslim countries of doing that. In Syria and Egypt, it is unfortunate that christians are being persecuted. But who’s fault is it? The blood of these innocent Syrian christians is on the hands of not just the perpetrators, but also America, Obama and the whole west, which gave its political support to a group of foreign mercenaries who are fighting a fake war, and who have asked Qatar and Saudi to finance them with their oil money. Shame on us but shame on you too (third person). If you want to label Muslim countries for these persecutions, please be consistent and label your countries too. The Americans are the ones who are mysteriously supporting radical crazies around here. These crazies exist in all societies and they’re always an extreme minority. But if you give them political and financial support, they can create hell. Well ask yourself, who is backing the radicalists in the region? The west, specifically America, specifically Obama. And who’s financing them? Unfortunately, the countries that are still controlled by Wahabists, notably Saudi Arabia.

Look at Egypt as a clear example. The majority of Egyptians want Morsi out. He is ousted and what does America say? America condemns it and asks for Morsi to be reinstated. Hah, what a joke.

So as I said, the shame isn’t just on Muslims in this case. The shame is on your people as well.

This is all dirty politics. If Muslims were so intolerant, then there wouldn’t be millions upon millions of foreigners living in the Gulf. If they were intolerant, they wouldn’t accept being a minority in their own countries. But look at the west. A tiny percentage of their counties is foreign and all hell breaks loose, apocalyptic rhetoric about “the end of western civilization”, “oh my god they’re gonna destroy us and rape our women”, yada yada, even though their civilization conquered the whole world and the whole world is now conforming to the civilization of Europe. Which I don’t mind, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Europhile.

Anyway, have a nice summer break. Visit us one day.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

What you are saying is ridiculous. If John Doe takes a gun and shoots someone dead, the courts will prosecute John Doe, not his employer, or his girlfriend, or his grandma who may pay him money for whatever… At least as far as a thought-out, centuries-old criminal law in the West. I don’t know about laws in your country. So don’t blame the United States for what the governments in Syria and elsewhere (not just crazy individuals!) are doing to their own peoples. Nor is the blame with American people. Sadly, most American people don’t know much about what’s going on in the world (hence, we at GeoCurrents are trying to rectify that). And don’t blame me personally for Obama’s policies either: I didn’t vote for him. But we have a democracy. And when democratic elections happened in Egypt, they freely elected Morsi, only to realize so soon their mistake. But it’s their fault not anybody else’s. It’s time that people in Muslim countries took responsibility for what they are doing.

Muhammad

In the same way you say it’s ridiculous, then maybe now you know how ridiculous you sounded when you said Muslims (Muslim countries) have done these crimes when it was only a few idiots running havoc. In that case, since you generalized the whole populous, why not apply your same methods on America? America is guilty of the rise of Islamists in the past couple of years.

Ironically it’s not the government of Syria that’s doing the crime against the christians. Rather it is the Al-Qaeda fighters who the West have backed.

Asya please, the elections in Egypt were rigged. The absolute majority didn’t want those idiots to come to power, no way. We see things going on the ground here in the middle east and when we turn to BBC, CNN and other media, they present the total opposite to the global viewers. It’s so sinister and sickening and disgusting. When the Arab spring happened, we all thought this was our enlightenment. Secularists were in joy, finally we were moving in the right direction. What happened next was total betrayal from the west.

Just like now you’re saying Iran is persecuting Jews. Well, who placed the Mullahs in power other than Jimmy Carter and his twisted administration? The Iranian revolution in 1979 wanted to follow the footsteps of secularization, modernization, democratization, heck even westernization. The driving force of Iran’s revolution were the Iranian secularists, not Islamists. But were the Iranian nationalist allowed a chance? No way. In the cold war era, the best person to lead Iran from the west’s point of view was an exiled Mullah living in France, because he was passionately anti-communist, therefore was going to protect the precious oil of the gulf from Soviet hands.

This is real and ugly truth, this is the real Geo currents madam Asya. And those people who came to power did their persecution indeed, and they should be punished. But who is also responsible?

The person who kills needs to be punished. But also the person who paid him to kill and supported him in his killing.

I hope Jimmy Carter reincarnates as an Iranian in his next life, and Obama as a Syrian. They should taste the fruits of their labor.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

I am and have been talking about the policies of Muslim states and governments, not what Muslim people do, as such. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. United States, surely protects its own interests in its foreign policy—what else should it do? That the majority of Muslim states (and certainly the ones that position themselves as the beacons of the Muslim world) cannot achieve some sort of peace and stabilty for the own people is very sad. But to be honest, I don’t think these governments give a hoot about their own people, which is the root cause of the problems, not the Americans, the Jews, or the little green aliens.

Nicéphore Jünge

It’s true that the West has done a lot to improve literacy in the World, and an Islamist is nothing other than a Muslim who got a chance to read the Quran and get the gist of it. ^^

Nicéphore Jünge

Yeah, and the Shia-Sunni millenium-long war must be the fault of the US as well. I bet it was an ancestor of George Washington who suggested to Ali to appoint arbitrators to decide the conflict rather than to finish Muawiyah’s forces off at Siffin…

Nicéphore Jünge

Lol, and here I thought Arabs and those that took up their imperial and suprematist ideology Islam had been killing and driving people out (but also more than often just dominating them to have them do your work for you and exploit and persecute them) for the past 1300 years plus. Tell me, do you think Christians and Hindu workers that have been and are being imported are well-treated in the Arabian Peninsula? You do know that for many years of Arabo-Islamic imperialism (at least until the fall of the Ommeyad Empire) Arab-Muslims have been tiny minorities in their empire, right? Or don’t you? Ever heard of such things as dhimma, dhilla, devshirme…?

Nicéphore Jünge

The Caucasus is a border of Europe, so the question of the people on each side of it and on it itself is posed. Same thing for the Ourals and the Finno-Ougrians that might be beyond it – they would still qualify as Europeans nonetheless. Just as the core Byzantine Anatolians were more than plausibly European, but the core of Turkey today is not anymore.

I never said that the geographical borders of Europe were not set in stone, they mostly are : the Artic Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (up to and including Iceland), the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Caspian Sea, and the Oural Mountains. The only possible ambiguities are minor ones, such as : where exactly is the limit between Europe and Asia in between the Caspian Sea and the Oural Mountains, or how should the different boundaries be measured (for instance, what distance from the highest points of the Caucasus fault-line should Europe be considered to stop. But the major lines are drawn and have been for ages. Siberia is not part of Europe, it is a European colony. And Even though the Nakhs are not European (at least in my estimation) they obviously reside (along with some of the Azeris and a few others) inside geographical Europe, just as the Turks aren’t European but occupy parts of European Thrace & Cyprus. It’s not that complicated, really.

Jose

They’re as European as Serbs or Armenians are. Thinking otherwise is indulging in a double standard, at least as i see it.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Precisely.

Muhammad

That’s great of you Jose. Unfortunately, people like Andrew Davies (who posted a comment here) think that you can’t be Muslim and European at the same time. Unfortunately, there are many bigots. If only they visit those countries that they reject and see with their own eyes how European their cultures are, then they wouldn’t be so hellbent on rejecting them.

Nicéphore Jünge

I forgot to mention full-blooded Europeans, that come out of totally European communities, and that convert to Islam, for instance. To me they obviously not only stop being true Europeans, but they are the scum of the Earth and don’t deserve to live. They are much worse than a complete foreigner that would also be an adherent to an even more hostile ideological movement and would even be engaging in open warfare.

To belong to a physical and civilizational people, you can’t be either of radically different ancestry or of radically different culture/civilization/ideology than the norm. It’s a combination of blood & spirit, if you will. So Turks and Azerbaïjanis, who consider themselves to descend from Central Asian invaders (even if they are only on average around 10% Eastern-Asian, and mostly descend from Anatolians) and who are Muslims (which like Judaism entails an extreme opposition to all non-Muslims, i.e. notably to European civilisation, however you want to define it, for instance, in terms of its core at least : Indo-European in general, Greco-Roman in particular, adhering to the principle of Incarnation (a symbol of the possible oneness of Being, in radical opposition to the Jewish and Islamic strict opposition between a God and the World) & the Trinity (a symbol of the possible unity of diversity), and rationality/positivism) are not European at all. Albanians are a more problematic issue, and I consider Muslim (and likely even Communist) Albanians to be renegades, but not Christian or Agnostic/Atheist/Monist… Albanians. Same thing for Bosniaks (who are genetically completely European, whereas Albanians are – something which is even more pronounced with the Nakhs (Tchetchens/Daghestanis/etc.) for instance – genetically among the least typically European of all peoples who could have a claim to being European. Turks obviously are also genetically quite foreign, a mix of genes European, Semitic, Turkic, Iranian, archaic aboriginal… That said, if some of the most genetically European Turks rejected Islam (most potential candidates to this already correspond to forms of pseudo-Islam, by the way, such as Alevism-Bektashism – whereas Islam and mysticism are in total opposition, there only exist forms of “mystic Islam” because if a mystic didn’t strive his best to try and prove he was still a Muslim, in Muslim-dominated lands, he would go the way of Hallaj or Sohravardi…) and proved so, and abandonned Turkishness wholly (language & all) then I could maybe counsider them European, and if I did their natural homeland might be the part of Thrace that Turkey currently occupies. But to me, especially clear is that Muslim Albanians are not to be considered true Europeans, and even moreso with the Nakhs, the Tatars, the Jews, the Romas, the Azeris, and probably a couple of others. But the Georgians, the Armenians, etc., are obvious Europeans. You have to keep in mind that all else being equal, common historical belonging to a religion tends to correlate and be at least significantly explained by a common ancestry and/or historical solidarity, association, ethno-cultural alliance and inter-marriage…

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

There is a lot that doesn’t make sense here, but here’s a simple geographical question: if one assumes (as you seem to in another comment here) that the boundary of Europe coincides with the Great Caucasus Mountain range (hence your comment about the Caucasus being on the border of Europe), why is it that Georgians and Armenians are Europeans and the North Caucasus peoples are not? If on the other hand, you take “European” to be a designation of a club on whose membership you can decide at will, I am just going to point out that it makes the term completely meaningless for the rest of the world who don’t live in your head.

Nicéphore Jünge

I thought I had explained. One aspect of Europe is its being a territory; but what makes a European is not just being born or living there, it’s decisively sharing in the collective being most associated with that land – i.e. its people, determined mostly by two dimensions : blood (genetics and genealogy, if you will) and spirit (culture and civilization). These two tending, with exceptions proving the rule, to correspond with geographic proximity, intensity of historical interactions, cognitive and behavioral commonalities, belonging to the same major historical religions, going through the same epochal transformations of way of life. Being European is not restricted to a single easy criterion, but is a complex combination of elements, a cluster, and two people’s relative clusters don’t even have to be made of all the same elements, as long as both clusters bring them above a certain threshold of identification with the core being of Europe considered as a social fact. Also, it is easier to say who’s obviously not even a reasonable candidate to be considered European than it is to decide on marginal cases. For instance, if one is genetically very foreign to the European kind, identifies culturally with an extra-European entity, religiously with one that has been at war with most of Europe and openly seeking the destruction of Europe’s own theologico-political traditions and sovereignties for all its millennium-plus existence, has ancestors that haven’t ever lived in geographic Europe nor was born nor lives there himself or herself, then : case closed. So for instance a Sunni Muslim Turk which has a clear predominance of extra-European genetic make-up (say that his tribal community consists mostly of people belonging, on the patrilinial side, to Y-haplogroups typical of North/Eastern Eurasia, such as O, Q, C, and D, as well as ones typical elsewhere outside of Europe, such as especially J1, but also say E, L, A… and lacking Y-haplogroups most typical of Europe, especially R, I, G… ; and on the matrilineal side, though the demarcations are much less neat, would have has mostly extra-European Mtdna-Haplogroups, meaning mostly little H) and that lives say in Mersin, Turkey, than there’s no question he’d be a total non-European. But of course, in the case of a genetically much closer to the average European profile, or to one of its traditional peculiar other profiles, and speaker of an Indo-European, Caucasian, Uralic, or Basque language, and from a people who has never identified in opposition to Europe but quite the contrary, who doesn’t adhere to any anti-European ideology and/or religion, and whose ancestry is rooted around a border of geographical Europe, such as is the case for Armenians for example, it’s harder but I vote yes. And I didn’t say that the North Caucasus people aren’t European, I said the Nakhs aren’t – they are genetically heavily J2 (akin to Arabs) and have adopted Islam. Georgians may be genetically pretty distinct from the average European profile, and speak a non-Indo-European language but as I was alluding to, and like for example the Northern-Finns, they are a totally integrated people, who’ve been there for tens of thousands of years, who have never rejected or betrayed Europe nor seeked to assimilate to foreigners… Hence there is no reason for them not to be recognized as totally European. You have to keep in mind that this is a political determination, even if it’s based on many objective facts. But where one draws the line is necessarily subjective, and may the best man or woman win.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Well, my point has been that the definition you propose is very subjective. The clearly cases are just that—clear, and therefore uninteresting. It’s the more controversial ones that are of interest. As with the Georgians for example. They are as genetically distinct from (other) Europeans as North Caucasian groups. Moreover, what you seem to care about as far as genetics is the direct male line (Y-DNA haplotype), which only tells a small part of the story. As for the genetics of the Caucasian peoples is concerned, the best quote I’ve heard on the matter is from a geneticist who said that rather than asking whether this or that Caucasian group is genetically European we should be asking whether Europeans are genetically Caucasian. In other words, from the genetic point of view it’s not that the Caucasus is on the fringe of Europe, but Europe is on the fringe of the Caucasus. The latter region has far more genetic diversity. As for whether Georgians “have never rejected or betrayed Europe nor seeked to assimilate to foreigners”, I think it’s a very moot question to begin with. I am sure Geogians would find your claim that they are “assimilated to Europeans” rather offensive, by the way.

Nicéphore Jünge

I wrote that they are fully integrated among all European peoples, not what you mysteriously seem to have read… And I used Y-haplogroups and Mtdna-haplogroups (which are less diverse and interesting, because women tend to migrate much less than men I suppose), because it’s available and easy to grasp, but you’d have to add autosomal data, measure admixture, and such. And we were talking about who’s European and who is not, not what’s more interesting to a geneticist in comparing Caucasians to Russians or whomever…

Nicéphore Jünge

Let’s see : they have been considered by Europeans not to be European ; they don’t consider themselves Europeans, and consider living in Europe when they do, living in Galuta (exile), and they identify with other diasporic Jews everywhere in the World as well as with Jews in Canaan ; they actually define themselves by pretended election, i.e. distinction, through adherence to a religion that is not shared by any other European people, as a difference from all others ; their symbolic center of the world has always been and still is in the Semitic world, their language isn’t European, not even Indo-European, but Semitic, and genetically they are largely inbred with a strong Oriental component (though their founding population was mixed, especially with Romans if my memory serves correct)… For all these reasons and certainly others I’m not thinking to mention right now, nope, ‘Ashkenazi Jews’ are not Europeans.

Muhammad

Hi Thord. My name is deceiving. I’m not a Muslim. I was born a Muslim but I left Islam a long time ago. I’m from one of the Gulf Arab states. I can safely tell you that we (as Gulf Arabs) are a minority in our own backyards. In the United Arab Emirates (which is famous for cosmopolitan cities like Dubai), the local Emiratis are only 13% of the total population. In Qatar, the local Qataris are only 15% of the total population. In Kuwait, the local Kuwaitis are only 45% of the total population. How’s that for an endangered culture, lol?

We lost our clothing traditions. People no longer wear the Arabic robe. Our music has lost way to either real western music or westernized Arabic music. We’re not having babies, we’re way below the replacement rate. Worst yet, we built cities that would take far more people than our native populations, so we will always need expats to fill the huge gap and they will always outnumber us. South Asians outnumber us almost 3:1 if not more. We also have a huge population of White expatriates in the Gulf. Locals are marrying outside their customs, we’re mixing with the foreign populations that outnumber us.

I bet you didn’t know that, did you?

Our society is slowly but surely being westernized. We’re not that preservationist.

Speaking of gene pools, go to Jeddah if you ever get the chance. The Saudis of the Hejaz are literally a mixed race, which perhaps explains their rejection of Riyadh-backed Wahabism. The gene pool in the eastern Arabian side is changing too.

If you were an Arab, you will hate my guts, because I’m one of those liberal Arabs who doesn’t mind seeing his culture change by the Europeans.

Stefano Lazzaro

As pointed out in the conclusion of the post, the actual explanation(s)
for the rise of the xenophobic right in Europe would require “a
country-by-country” analysis.
A few notes on the Italian case might be useful.

It is quite inaccurate to say that “the Lega Nord is more xenophobic
towards Southern Italians than towards Muslims”. In fact, the Lega Nord
opportunistically emphasizes discrimination against any non-Northern Italian
social group. Which social group is more discriminated against depends on
specific situations and potential political gains (for instance, the relatively
recent enthusiastic endorsement of “Christian values”, in spite of
the movement’s ‘paganistic’ flirtations, has been used in harsh anti-Muslims campaigns
in the context of widespread Islamophobic propaganda).

No racist cliché is left unturned in the movement’s crudest political
discourse at the local level, whereas within national institutions the party
has adopted a more formal approach; although there’s most certainly no lack of
‘incidents’ that galvanize the party’s supporters.

The Lega Nord’s underlying historical strategy has framed socioeconomic
issues (originally, it was the migration of job-seekers from the South) in
terms of ethnic/racial/cultural/religious oppositions through the amalgamation
of widespread prejudices. There has been no real attempt at constructing a
coherent ideological view other than an extremely simplistic version of the
clash-of-civilizations discourse. The fact that such a discourse doesn’t
concern itself with providing a coherent ideology but aims instead at simply
welcoming any xenophobic/ethnicist/racist impulse is probably the very reason
for the party’s success among people who aren’t interested in the institutionalized
politics that had long dominated the public arena. In fact, the popularity of
the Lega Nord partially derives from the fact that the party has always
highlighted its ‘ordinary person’ character, also through the use of
stereotypically rude and uneducated language, and has represented itself as an
anti-political movement engaged in a fight against the political elite
(“the caste”, as many have taken to call it nowadays in Italy); a
move that attracted the Northern small/family business network, which is an
important social force in the area. (Lately, the populist “anti-caste”
card has been successfully played by the new MoVimento 5 Stelle, whose
political consensus surged in the last national elections, whereas the votes
for the Lega Nord, which spent years in the national government, drastically
dropped).

As for the weak support that little radical right parties receive, it
must be said that during the last 20 years Italy’s strong post-fascist
tradition, through Alleanza Nazionale, successfully wrapped its ideological
roots in a modern conservative nationalist party that became a fundamental
component of center-right coalitions. The party eventually split and its
internal currents funded different parties. However, the party’s role has been
crucial to the development of the post-fascist tradition and its historical success
has had a strong negative impact on radical right parties.

Italy’s 2002 immigration law is known as “Legge Bossi-Fini”,
named after the leaders of the Lega Nord and Allenza Nazionale respectively.
Both parties were essential members of the center-right coalition in the
national government. The law was a more restrictive version of the previous one
(Turco-Napolitano, 1998), which had been passed by the center-left coalition and
was certainly not famous for taking a soft stance on immigration – among other
things, the 1998 center-left law ordered the construction of the first
“administrative detention centers”.

That being said, the definition of xenophobia given in the post is quite puzzling
insofar as it “refers to any political platform that calls for the strict
limitation of immigration […]” (it also doesn’t seem to get along well
with the title: “any political platform” vs. “the xenophobic
right”). Given the lack of a clear explanation as to what “strict
limitation” means, one is forced to focus mainly on ‘zero-tolerance’ style
political platforms that are openly ethnicist/racist. However, “strict
limitation” arguably encompasses much more than just (degrees of) ‘zero-tolerance’
and is most often the result of the interaction of several variables – for
instance, socioeconomic considerations, since restrictive policies don’t
translate into decreasing immigration rates but mostly into limited civil and
political rights, which also translates into greater availability of disposable
people in the labor market.
The umbrella term “xenophobia” sounds euphemistic in relation
to ethnicist/racist political platforms and, on the other hand, it is
misleadingly reductionist in relation to restrictive policies (not peculiar to
the right and rightmost movements in the political spectrum), which are by no means
based solely on xenophobia.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Thank you for sharing those thoughts about the Italian situation!

William Dalebout

Explanation: multiculturalism is a failure. Look no further.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

It doesn’t explain why “xenophobic” parties are more popular in some countries than in others.

Sophia

You have a great blog here, which I will continue to read, unless it becomes an anti-European hate-fest. It’s a shame that you would employ the nasty anti-European racist Asya Pereltsvaig as a moderator. You can see by the comment section that your readership consists of people who are decidedly NOT racist against Europeans. Please rectify this, as there is no place in the world for hateful, racist, far-left, marxist, genocidalsts, such as asya.

James Mayer

Basically, third-world immigration into Europe damages our countries and makes them less healthy and desirable. This is bad, and is now being realised more and more by the people of our great continent. This is why we turn to the right – we care about our culture and survival, and we are not going to stop until they are guaranteed. Our nations, our people, our way of life.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

The saddest thing that this discussion brought to the fore is that the European culture (or European peoples, if you prefer) have turned out to be incapable of assimilating, absorbing, integrating newcomers/immigrants, including those from very different cultures. United States, Australia, even Israel (which European countries/politicians incessantly criticize) managed to do just that, and Europe failed on that score. European society pretty much split into those who are willing to abandon European traditions, ideologies, philosophies, customs, etc. and those that call for destroying culturally and even physically those who bear alternative cultures/traditions etc. lest they destroy Europe as it has been. That’s truly a catastrophe for the European culture.

Guest

Who are you to tell any European what he should pay for from his hard work? It is not the task of the Europeans to pay for anybody`s life, anybody`s future, anybody`s education, housing and healthcare.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Who did I tell what to pay for???

Fwenchfwies

But why should Europeans integrate people from elsewhere? Is that some sort of axiomatic good thing?

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Indeed it is. Because we live in an interconnected world, where people are mobile and move and re-settle in new places all the time, whether as individuals (e.g. intermarriage) or as groups (e.g. Muslim migrants in Europe). To pretend that this is not going to keep happening is an “ostrich-like” thing to do. What seems to be the case is that Europe splits into those who want to shut any such newcomers out lest they destroy things as they are, and those who are willing to abandon European traditions/values etc. because they don’t value them. Either way, I think it would be a bad outcome.

Fwenchfwies

The people who move and resettle by choice (Oh, wouldn’t it be great to go live in Paris!) are an extremely small and elite minority. For the rest of us, immigration is a great sadness and loss. It may be “enriching” but that enrichment come at an enormous cost. Most immigrants would not leave the countries of their birth if they could live in peace there with a minimum of prosperity. The situations which cause people to immigrate are mostly the results of politics and public policies and when it is a question of ecological disaster, those problems can be partially mitigated by political and public policy decisions. There is no reason people should have to move around the world to survive.
You write, “to pretend that this is not going to keep happening is ‘an ostrich-like’ thing to do. You are wrong, it is not inevitable and is also not very positive for any of the populations concerned.

“There is no reason people should have to move around the world to survive” — maybe in the ideal world, but in the real world, political, economic and ecological disasters will continue to happen and people will continue to migrate. Isolationist thinking, which includes the negative attitude towards migration, is simply a reaction to a simple fact of life that people(s) move and mix. Thinking that one can stop the inevitable ultimately means that one is not prepared to deal with the reality. That’s exactly what happens in many quarters in Europe.

The biggest right wing party (that has an ideological base similar to the one you spoke in your article) was the PND with 0,21% of the votes.

Shro

Have in mind that some of it is just political rhetoric. Bulgarian “Ataka” is now in a coalition with the ethnic Turks “DPS” party. There is more context in the cited words of Siderov, related to the same ethnic party, he is supporting now.
There are a lot of far-right/not so far-right nationalists movements in Bulgaria and with the growing numbers of refugees from Africa and the Middle East, these movements are becoming more active. I suspect that their role will be rising in the following years.

peterlund

“refugees”?

peterlund

Your map is wrong. Dansk Folkeparti is not in government in Denmark and never has been. It supported the coalition government of Venstre and Det Konservative Folkeparti 2001-2011, just like Enhedslisten (communists) support the current coalition of Socialdemokraterne, Det Radikale Venstre, and SF (reformed communists).

Furthermore, Dansk Folkeparti is not on the “right”. They are most like the Social Democrats were 20-50 years ago (depending on the subject). It does have its roots in a previous parti (Fremskridtspartiet – The Progress Party) that was mostly liberal (also economically) to the extent it wasn’t too anarchic to have a policy for anything.

The map is also wrong for Sweden: Sverigedemokraterne are not in government and probably won’t ever be unless the natives manage to wake up in time. They are so much in denial about the bad effects of immigration that they sometimes photoshop criminals in the newspaper to make them look Swedish.

jemblue

The second map seems a little silly – France and Turkey shouldn’t be the same color. France might be 10% Muslim while Turkey is about 95%.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

True, but Turkey isn’t really under discussion here…

Northern American-Nationalist

[1] In this article, “xenophobia” refers to any political platform that
calls for the strict limitation of immigration, strengthened border
controls, the reform or abolition of the Schengen Zone, or even the expulsion of minorities.

Given that, then any political platform that calls for the liberal limitation of immigration, weakened border controls, the strengthening reform or status quo maintenance of the Schengen Zone, or even the inclusion of minorities should logically be refered to as “xenophillia.” That would mean most parties, including the mainstream, in contemporary European/Western polities are xenophillic.

SirBedevere

I would not distinguish between those who are unlike (xenos) me and those who are like (homoios) me (really, there are very few like me, if any). I will, though, cop to being anthropophilic.

http://www.pereltsvaig.com Asya Pereltsvaig

Thanks God for that!

Northern American-Nationalist

In that case, those “xenophobes” are in fact simply “homiophiles!” haha Although, that would make you sir a homiophobe by extension! haha

SirBedevere

All xenophobes are, indeed, homoiophiles. As you note, these terms are used by opponents, so the negative is always stressed, just as the positive is stressed when talking about oneself (just look at the idiotic terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice”). I would never discriminate against those like me (middle-aged, middle-class, Anglican Americans of Northeastern European descent, I suppose). As I said, I will agree to being anthropophilic and if you are looking for the negative of that, I disagree vehemently with animal rights people and, if they exist, plant rights people, in holding that only humans should have any rights recognized by humans whatsoever. Since zoophobic would seem to me to include humans, however, that term would not seem to fit and phytophobic would seem to indicate that I favor animals over plants. Perhaps someone at PETA or someplace has a good term for me. Speciesist?

Most politologues who study the subject agrees that voting for the xenophobics are the only way to express opposition to high unemployment and neoliberal policies. The more the official Right and Left converge on a NAIRU policy, people turn to the xenophobics.

ararar3

wanting to decrease immigration to sustainable levels is not xenophobic.
Xenophobic is being scared of different people.
Most of the immigration in Switzerland is from Germany, Italy and France. How can a party who wants to reduce this immigration be called xenophobic, when these immigrants are from the same linguistic and ethnic groups of the local population?